


A Dying Sun

by chrysanthemumthrone



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1920s, F/M, Historical Hetalia, Identity, M/M, Pearl Harbor - Freeform, Politics, Treaty of Versailles, WW1, WW2, all the sino japanese wars, anglo japanese alliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysanthemumthrone/pseuds/chrysanthemumthrone
Summary: He could not beat them, those imperialists, so he joined them himself. In the glory of the Rising Sun, he almost did not realize what he had lost, or what he had never found.Longish character study of Japan and his relationship with China, from the beginning of his Westernization to the end of WW2.





	1. 1853 and on

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick history you should know before reading the first chapter! the history in the later chapters is more self evident.
> 
> Before 1853, Japan was a closed country (saikoku). The country was ruled by a military leader called a shogun, while the emperor couldn't even leave the palace.
> 
> In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry, an America, comes to Japan and forces the country to open its foreign relations and trade with the rest of the world, threatening the Japanese (with guns of course). Japan opens up and decides to modernize in order to become as strong as the Americans and Europeans.
> 
> In the 1860s, the Bakumatsu happens. Basically the nobility and shogunate fight over their right to modernize Japan; the nobility wins, and restores the emperor to his glory (Meiji Restoration), though he’s kind of a figurehead. Japan is now en route to Westernize, but even if it plays by Europes rules, the West may never accept it.

Japan wasn’t sure when it began to feel like his time was up. For one, he still meandered by the beaches at night, alone, surrounded only by his own mountains, and convinced that loneliness was his divine burden. He could always depart, seeking China or even Korea's home, but was that fitting for the singular Land of the Gods? What were foreigners, outsiders, and outcasts to this country, but drink from a forbidden cup? What could they be, to his heart and his king, even if he no longer wanted to be alone?

So he sat on the sediment, his feet to their ankles in clear water. Colors faded into bluescale as Amaterasu descended. He reached out for her as he whispered to himself the mollifying words of a storybook.

"They, lively as they are, can dig themselves both heaven and sepulchre from the wild world they have found,” he recited. “But you don’t have to. You can stay here, deriving your happiness from tranquility, recognizing that in a world of abyss and the lost, you don’t have to see it all.”

 

For somebody like him, the coast was a regular fixture. The same water that pooled around his feet, licking the edges of his haori sleeves, sometimes liked to crash and blunt itself against the harbor. That was familiar. But the metal hull flanked on both its sides by vast ribs of cannons was not. He jumped as this warship from a different world smashed through the waves, sliding into Edo Bay, its American flag blowing at full mast.

“Stay back now,” Japan ordered the two officials at his side. “I’m going to go up there first and see what they want.” Maybe if he was firm enough with his commands, it would assuage the adrenaline in his limbs.

“All right,” one of them acquiesced. “But you come right back here if they try to have their way with you.”

“That’s unspoken,” he reassured. If they still looked troubled, which they did, then there was nothing else he could do. Japan stepped forward to meet the ship of Commodore Matthew Perry.

Said Commodore was not any more comfortable, many meters above on a wooden deck, with his nation prodding his side. “What is it, Jones?” he gruffed to America, who was excited to the point of poking everything and everyone. It’s because, Perry thought to himself, we’ve been pent up too long together to have not grown close.

America looked off the deck once more, the rail pressing against his black uniform and knocking against its eagle-ornated buttons. They don’t wear anything remotely similar, America observed, looking to the Japanese men wrapped in simple clothes below. He rested his cheek against an arm. As expected.

“I was hoping you’d be more lively, Commodore. It ain’t fun when I’m the only one who’s so thrilled.” America grinned to one of the sailors lingering nearby. “It makes me feel like the child.”

“Be proud of being that child,” the sailor sighed. “Children don’t get aches, y’know. Unlike me.”

“That’s unfortunate, Jem,” America agreed.

"There's that one man walking towards us," Jem said, suddenly. "Maybe he's their boss."

"He's too young," America shrugged. "Or maybe— he's someone interesting."

The ramp was let down unceremoniously. He, the United States, would have liked to have been afraid of nothing, but in all truth he was just as anxious as the men on the shore. Did he not have to make a good impression? Did they not need the Japanese to accept the request of the President? Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so bold as to go right up to Edo Bay, where the Japanese forbid foreign intrigues. Yet these thoughts never stayed long. The American tended to live feeling sorry after the fact, and it usually paid off.

Japan’s eyes remained on the ship, first the cannons and then the tricolor flag, even as the Westerners descended before him. Just as he finally glanced straight ahead, he felt a hand on his shoulder, clasped in leather, clutching with such fervor that it made him jump. "Good morning," America greeted in Dutch. "You like that flag?"

"Don't touch me," Japan stuttered. And with that reproach, the other’s eyes widened, nervousness bubbling up within the cracks of his smile, and his hand released itself as if it had met hot iron. “Please,” Japan added, now feeling om enough embarrassment for both of them.

“My bad,” the American apologized, then took a step back. Caught off guard, the blond nearly lost his idea of what he was going to say and do. “I was just going to comment that you were looking at my emblem very fondly.”

“I’m the United States of America,” he continued merrily. “My men and I’ve got a request for your shogun. That’s who’s in charge, right? They told me that the emperor doesn’t do much.”

“Yes,” Japan managed, rather incredulously.

America paused for a long moment, then raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “You aren’t bowing to me, nor are you in a scuffle for your credentials. Who are you?”

“May I say this, America?” he interrupted, making sure to tag on a polite intonation. “You’re quite bold for having just anchored in a country that you have never seen nor assessed before. I heard of how you bypassed Osaka Bay despite the requests of my government. Then you further confirmed my worries with your attitude, not that you’re unpleasant. Please explain to me, as a nation who has spent thousands of years without complex diplomacy. What are you doing?”

America blinked in recognition, then laughed. “Good morning, Japan! My apologies, I just wanted to see this land and make a friend.”

Their men remained silent around them, as the two nations continued to fix each other with a curious gaze. “I know I’m being audacious, and I don’t mean to be rude,” America explained. “It’s just that you have nothing to be afraid of—” then he stepped back, until his hand could reach out and touch the wall of his ship. “—when you have guns and a fleet.”

He pat the hull like it was a pet, the way Japan would pet a turtle. The soldier inside of him flared with jealousy.

 

America was England's child in all capacity; the world did not know it yet, but one day the United States would inherit Great Britain's crown, and the reign of Pax Britannica would cede itself to Pax Americana.

Then who was grand China's real heir, though all of East Asia seemed his children? Japan had never thought of these sorts of affairs when he had been truly young; at that time, China had been the immortal center of the world, and there was no need to speculate. And even on his last legs, China seemed to remain the center of Japan’s orbit. Would Japan ever seek a different nest? Would he ever find himself sick from China's arrogance and the inseparable distance that would never disappear between his island and the Middle Kingdom?

He supposed he could complain about the mishaps of the other, and he wasn't wrong, but at the bottom of his heart, China was simply someone dear to him, his old man, one could say. He could never be what Japan considered home, but he got close enough.

I would call him my tranquility, Japan thought, but sometimes he's so embarrassing. He pulled the Shinto robes tighter against his shoulder. These clothes were much older than the kimonos that he now liked to wear; they were the clothes of his so called childhood and the clothes he imagined his deities would don. It secretly pleased him, to appeal to a sentimentalism he wasn't even sure that China possessed.

Two elderly attendants led the way to China's study. Brushing aside a beaded veil, Japan made his way in, and the attendants bowed and departed. China looked up to meet Japan with a tired smile. Before Japan could get any closer, though, a young girl ran out from behind the curtain and hugged Japan's waist.

"Ah, Taiwan," China protested, straightening out his long sleeves. "Let your brother come through."

"He's not my brother," she refuted, sending a mischievous grin at the man in her arms.

"Whatever," China sighed. "Just give us a moment alone." She nodded, obedient even in playfulness, slipping through those beads like a ghost.

"What was she doing here?" Japan asked, unable to stop himself from glancing after her.

"Studying," China replied nonchalantly, motioning Japan to close their distance, a request that went heeded. Perhaps Japan remained obedient too. "Kiku, would you like a cup of tea?"

"I'm fine," Japan turned down. He liked to joke to himself that if he didn’t refuse China now and then, things would get boring. After all, it was seldom that Japan would have power over the other.

"Sit down then at least. Right now you’re just standing around awkwardly.” Japan laughed softly. "No, I'm fine."

"Wow. Somehow you become more of a brat the older you get," China chided, with no real malice. "Well, if we aren't going to drink together, we might as well take a walk and see the sun.”

"You're bright enough for the both of us, Yao,” Japan flattered, causing the elder nation to roll his eyes. 

“Sunbeams may be bright and golden,” China insisted, having gotten up and already making his way towards the exit, “but the sun itself is red and furious. It’s an important distinction. Now get outside.”

Japan found himself slipping past China in order to pass out the narrow door. For a brief moment, China’s fingers touched against his forearms to steady him, and Japan almost flinched. Electricity jolted up his spine, and time seemed to slow down. Then the beads snapped, time sped up again, and the both of them were down the hallway.

What was that? Japan wondered, narrowing his eyes briefly at a statue, as if its dragon face would answer him. China grabbed his arm and led him towards the garden. This time, he felt nothing, even as China’s palm stayed longer against his clothes, pressing gently into his skin.

He thought it was simply exhaustion; he hadn’t slept properly since the warships had left, promising an expedient return.

The two retraced old footsteps: down those cobbled paths there, up these creaking stairs here, past the well in which lay the corpse of a queen, around the golden lions and under the familiar sloping roofs of the Far East. 

"I still think you should move in with me," China said. "You said you liked it better here than in Kyoto. Plus, we've never really all lived together. You, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and so forth. To do so at last would be this old king's dream."

"Come to my house then," Japan proposed, and China snorted. "I'm still protecting you, so that wouldn't be appropriate, Kiku."

"And what part of me are you protecting?" Japan wondered with rare impetousity. "I'm not a child anymore, so don't plead anything like the innocence of the children."

"Not at all," China promised. "You must think that I'm silly for saying this, but I want to salvage your freedom. I'm not naive enough to think I have the power to do it. But I dream the parent’s dream of a world in which you may grow up as you please, not having to distort yourself into whatever the era forces."

"That's a beautiful dream," Japan muttered.

"You really think so?" China teased. The other nation closed his eyes in noncommittal response, before blinking them open as if it were morning.

"The sky is gorgeous today," Japan intoned, beginning to walk ahead. Then he threw his head back and smiled innocently. "It reminds me of you."

"Keep going, Kiku!,” called out China. "Maybe you'll hit your fiftieth flatter before dinner!"

Pillars and tombs called towards ancient glory in China's imperial palace. The world of easy happiness, of solitude and tranquility, was much unlike China's heaven and sepulchre, and it choked Japan to be excluded from it, even for his own good. He had not always felt like this, longing to share the burden of the rest of the world. Why now?

 

China, for one, shared the burden of England’s imperial glory. Even Japan could see it, and he watched with disgust; wars for opium, the ruining of the greatest economy in the world, and to think that England, the thin, blond man sitting behind the mahogany desk, did it all himself. At the heart of this empire over which the hot sun never set was a mere island, just as was Japan. The United Kingdom was a living contradiction: did he want to keep his hands off the rest of nations, as he had once done in the security of his grand navy, or did he want to use that power to dominate them? Did he value human dignity more than any other European, as one of the homelands of Western democracy, or did he live in fear of human equity, knowing it would undermine the colonial system atop which he ruled?

Besides Japan, Korea scowled, the irritated expression on his face at odds with the prim manner in which both he and Japan stood, witnessing today one of the several conferences convening over the future of the war, and the peace. With their backs straight, arms slid under their sleeves, and cloaked in fabric white enough to be called pure, they were merely overlooking statues with no real word in the matter. The actual delegates were China and England, both looking worse for wear sitting across each other, though England let himself smile now and then. He was not, after all, the one who slept the sleep of the defeated.

“Look at that cocky expression on his face,” Korea hissed. “What will they ask for next? The rest of China’s autonomy?”

Japan kept looking ahead calmly, as they were supposed to. “This is the old game of conqueror and the conquered. We all are one or the other. It seems that the Western formula has worked better than it would suit us.” 

Korea closed his eyes. “Hm. Good for them. I would rather live by my own ‘formula’ than be the victor.”

Now that was something that threatened to turn Japan’s head. “Are you serious?” he whispered. “You would subject yourself to the hardship that China is undergoing right now? You would prefer to let them shatter the lives of your people instead of—” what was the only other option? Japan asked himself “—adapting to the situation?”

The other frowned. “I remind you that I have lived as one of the conquered for thousands of years. I’ve come to think that the only way my people can be shattered is if they abandon who they are. Otherwise, I have strength in their resilience.”

“Pretty words,” Japan replied lowly. “I bet thousands of now dead nations also once uttered them.”

“We all die anyway,” Korea insisted. “Better to die on my own terms.”

“If China falls now,” he retorted, “it wouldn’t be a death on his own terms. It’d be a death without honor.”

Then came the sudden sound of the snapping of a pen. “Will you two shut up?” China growled. “I’m not going to die tonight.”

England laughed. “Is that what they’re saying? Don’t worry, both of you, I’ll spare him his life.” His green eyes were too bright for the lightless room. “In all seriousness though, it would be better if you quieted down.”

Japan and Korea both bowed in apology; nevertheless, Japan seethed with the conviction of his argument. If it were me, he thought, almost vindictively, and I had to undergo change, I wouldn’t abandon myself. I’d make their ‘formula’ my own; I’d domesticate it and play their game...

And if he won their game, he'd never let them lay their hands on China ever again. He was sure that it was just as much a world of protector and protected as it was a world of conqueror and conquered. Protecting. That's what China still wanted to do for Japan, wasn’t it? If security was really what China had been giving to Japan all along...

During the intermission, Japan sought out England in the dining room, whose chairs had been removed even before the house was used for diplomacy. Its formerly simple furnishings now weighed with European decorations and souvenirs. Throw out the furniture, and you had a storage room of occidental trinkets, laced with all the romance of that old continent. Throw out the trinkets, and it was all wood and bras, aged and used enough to be culture on its own.

England raised an eyebrow at the entrance of the Asian, who stood in front of him, clasped one hand over the other, then kneeled.

“Please give my brother a peace that will spare at least his recovery,” Japan said. “I don’t know if in the history of warfare there has ever been anything called a ‘fair’ peace, so I entreat you to give him a kind one. You have already achieved your objectives in entering this war. Anything more would risk the destabilization of the entire region, which benefits no one.”

England widened his eyes with interest. “You speak English quite well for someone with your level of isolation. Though I doubt that you’re fascinated with foreigners or their languages, Japan.”

Hearing his name sounded out in English struck the wrong chord inside Japan. “I ask you to address my request forwardly, England.”

The Englishman rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “Ah, I don’t mean to ignore you. I have already been made known of your concerns, however. Of course they were taken into consideration when I drafted the terms.”

That drew a soft scoff out of the Eastern nation. “China finds them too harsh regardless.”

“He can find them however he pleases,” he replied dismissively. “I care about that less than your excellent English.” 

“How flattering,” Japan sighed, and England turned his head, smiling aside. “I suppose it would be appropriate for me to confess that I owe it to America. He taught me the basics and showed me how similar English is to Dutch.”

“That’s right,” England said. “He was the one who pulled you out of your cave some years ago.”

Japan shrugged. “He talks about you a lot.”

“What— that brat,” the other nation huffed. “Well, does he say good or bad things?”

“I cannot tell you that, England,” Japan grinned. “America is my friend.”

He expected slight indignation from the other, or plain indifference, but England just laughed, sounding nearly cynical. “I’m happy for you. It’s only been a year and you’ve already made another friend from the West. China took much longer to open up to the lot of us.”

It took him a bit of willpower to resist snapping, “I’m not opening up!” He really wasn’t, not yet. But with the angry words on the tip of his tongue, he wondered, did I not tell Korea that were I China, I would indeed open up? He had never thought himself to ever be important enough, in other words powerful enough, to make that decision. What if acquiescing to the West would give him that power, though?

So instead Japan said, “I do enjoy America’s company and conseil. And yours as well. I haven’t forgotten the work of the British statesman residing in my home, Sir Harris.”

Japan then lowered himself slightly further, now down as far as his pride would let him go. “Great Britain, if you will not assist China any further, then please assist me. As Harris may have informed you, my country is on the brink of civil war. The nobility wishes to oust the shogun and restore the Emperor to power. Despite the statements by the shogun proclaiming his wishes for modernization, I’m certain that a new regime under Emperor Mutsuhito will be more successful in that endeavor. France supports the shogunate and is supplying them weapons. Will you counter them by assisting the imperial faction, so that if fighting breaks out between nobility and shogunate, it may occur as equals?”

England crossed his arms, pausing for a moment before speaking. “France, huh? What an incredibly blunt offer.”

“And I was thinking about trying audacity for a change,” Japan said. Yes, he had thought it up about two seconds ago.

“Just another Eastern adventure,” England sighed. “That damned frog. Trying to string me across every part of the world.”

Japan shut his eyes. 

“If you want something new, then please wait for me. I will catch up, and show the world something it’s never yet seen.” 

That last sentence was said in a whisper that could not reach the Englishman’s ears. And so the storm came without an omen.

 

In their country, the house of the Emperor was said to have descended from the sun goddess, Amaterasu, and like this the Yamatos were blessed by the cosmos to rule. 

So what did the Emperor now think? How did quiet Mutsuhito, now victor of Japan with his advisers, find the change that passed Japan in the next decades? How did the prince who grew up reading Confucius feel about the budding schools that instead taught nationalism and Roman myths? Roads paved themselves; scientists from Britain, generals from Prussia, and lawyers from America were all hauled in like rare fish of the day. Hair was cut, katanas no longer permitted in open carry, extraterritoriality and foreigner privileges established. Everyone found a new world; while people began to read, the Emperor stepped out of his palace for the first time in his life and toured the country. Japan followed him and his closest men every step of the way, helping them monitor every step of modernization, and all along the way they clung onto the future and tried their best to kick off the past.

To build a fortunate country. To liberate himself from the misfortune of the rest of his family: Hong Kong and Macau were long gone now, weren’t they? He would have been vying for their stay. But he’d be lying if he said he was embarking on what would be considered a selfless journey.

Japan brushed his fingers against the bangs across his forehead. He might never get used to this, he thought. The idea that their holy land might chop his hair had already upset half the court when they heard of it; nevertheless, both he and the Emperor sheared it as a sign of new times.

Japan mourned. He remembered watching the black strands fall to the floor, hitting its cold surface and folding into loops. Black hair that caught the heat of noon light; if you dragged your fingers through on a hot day, how it felt like you were running your hand across a flowing fire. He wouldn’t feel that again in the same capacity, nor the love of the maids as they wove water and snuck flowers between each pin. But it was also equally liberating. When had he decided that he wanted his hair long, anyway? Now the wind hit the back of his neck like he was a bird in the air, no longer bristling against the bun he used to wear.

It had been America who had picked out his hairstyle, ever the proponent of new things. And cut it himself too. “You look better like this,” he had cheered upon completion. “Less like a woman, don’t you think?”

“In Japan, the men have long hair too,” Japan droned back in simple, enunciated Japanese. The kind of voice you reserve for idiots, for America was a situational one.

America hummed, not seeming to pick up on the tone. Or maybe he postponed all contemplation of ther other’s annoyance, per usual. But that was what had begun their odd, uneasy friendship in the first place; the American’s willingness to go beyond the brink, break through Japan’s shell, and make him leave it be it in light or dark outside.

This time, he thought that he had been lucky enough to end up in the light. If the sun and its beams were truly different things, then 19th century America was more of a ray than a star, and a truly golden one too. Golden hair, golden heart, but bloody hands upon which were stained with genocide and inequality. Those very hands had pressed against Japan’s scalp then, and, lost in the comfort, Japan reminded himself of how he regretted nothing. At the end of the day, America’s palms were still soft and smelled of rose cologne. 

And the warmth of America’s rich light could be all that he needed, some part of him enamored with this man of gold. When the other wasn’t being completely dense, anyway.

“I have a good idea.” America grinned at Japan in the mirror, with his usual shameless ardor for wasting time. “Why don’t we get you some Western clothes too?”

“Later please,” Japan protested. “This is already a lot for me to take in.”

“I get that. It’s not like I haven’t felt the same thing, right before I got onto the world stage myself. Those Europeans, huh? They love to make you feel like you aren’t part of them. But this is kind of something you have to do diving into the deep end headfirst.”

Japan closed his eyes, gently surprised by the fact that the American was trying to show understanding. Not that they were on the same level when it came to Europe —America could integrate himself much more easily than Japan with his black and almond eyes— but perhaps, Japan hoped, they might relate more acutely on other things.

“Does England do that to you?” Japan asked. “Treat you like you don’t belong?”

America shrugged. “Not necessarily. That old man gives me the cold shoulder one month and sends me biscuits the next. I don’t think he hates me. He just won’t let me..” he squinted through his glasses, like the answer was something that could be found visually “...he won’t let me reach him.”

“Won’t let you stand on his level?” Japan murmured. “Sees you as a child when you’ve since long grown up? And leave you with no idea how to cross that inescapable distance, or if you even want to?”

America paused, furrowing his brows and staring at the wall. 

“That’s exactly what it’s like.” The blond laughed softly. “I don’t know if it means I hate him or I adore him.”

“You’re real perceptive, Kiku,” America continued. “You must always be watching. You’re the type of person who’d be good at plotting things.”

“I just got lucky guessing this time,” Japan replied. “Don’t weave a tale more complicated than what it really is.” Indeed, it was a guess, to presume that America’s relationship with England was just like his with China.

“What will I do?” America groaned. “There’s no path to pave but forwards. Yet the further I advance, the more conflict comes between us.”

“I’ll notify you if I ever find a solution myself,” Japan replied lowly.

He didn’t end up buying Japan any starch collars or dress slacks, but he gave Japan the jacket of one of his navy uniforms. It was too big for the Asian, with broad shoulders that would look ridiculous were he any smaller, and it was given without then rest the uniform, so that if Japan wanted to put it on he had to do it over a kimono, looking like a mismatched doll. He ran his fingers over the buttons, the aiguillette, the epaulettes and tassels. He ran his fingers over the broken seams and other wounds sustained for glory, and like this, he fell in love with the worldly West. The Land of the Gods, then, had turned his back on the lonely peace of the last two thousand years, extending his arms to all abyss and loss that might come.

 

“Oi Kiku,” China insisted one evening. “We should go by the water and watch the stars.”

Looking away from the calligraphy on the wall, which spelled out “FORTUNE”, Japan met the other nation in the eye. “Are you sure? I might fall into the water in this dark.”

“You can pick the terrain then, be it West Lake, the Yalu River, or the ditch in my backyard. But we haven’t gotten to do something together in so long. Your old man is becoming an older man.”

“Hangzhou is closer than the ditch in your backyard,” Japan snorted. “So let’s go to West Lake.”

That night, they encountered the inoffensive misfortune of a too bright moon washing out the too dim stars. The band of the horizon was nearly pitch black, much too dark to see any of the nearby bridges and pagodas. Right then, all Japan had was the moon.

“Tell me what you find most beautiful about tonight’s moon,” China said. “I’ll start. I like the way it reflects off the water. It may be distorted in its image, sure, but seeing it afloat on the waves is the greatest reminder that no matter what happens to us, the moon will always be there. Something greater than us always persists.”

Japan closed his eyes, rubbing the skin between his thumb and forefinger. It was bruised, having been snapped by a mistake with a gun during a lesson he undertook. “I like how the moon wipes out the rest of the heavens tonight. I find that to be poetic,” he replied.

China made a face at him. “But that isn’t beautiful. That’s cruel.”

“You’re so sentimental, China,” Japan teased.

“Fine then,” he huffed. “We’ll talk like we’re tough people. Tell me what you find cruelest about tonight’s moon, Kiku. I’ll start again.”

The buzzing of bugs didn’t quite tune out the beat of China’s breathing. “To me, while this isn’t quite the moon’s fault, it’s sad how it can only shine after the sun falls. Lunar light,” he declared, “Comes from dead suns.”

And lunar light was what scratched the surface of West Lake and the tips of the grassblades that they sat upon this midnight. Japan frowned. “I think the cruelest thing about the moon is that I can’t touch it. It’s so beautiful.”

“You’re such a child, Kiku,” China laughed.

There was a shuffling of fabric as Japan got up. “I’m not a child,” he began, but right as he got on his two feet, one of his sandals slipped against the wet surface of the river bank. He yelped, falling forward and careening into the lake. A crash sounded as his body broke the waves, and he went under.

“Kiku!” China yelled, and that was the last thing Japan heard before all sound was muffled by the water. Then, he could not see, wiggling his fingers uselessly through the viscosity. Was it poetic? he asked himself as he sank. Drowning in this wide, old lake as the burning stars— a thousand ancient suns —drowned in the quiet serenity of the moon.

A hand grabbed his wrist firmly, jerking him upwards. He turned in its direction, feeling himself dragged upwards until he was finally hauled up back on the riverbank.

“Stupid Kiku!” China cursed, spitting out water and wiping his mouth. “Why didn’t you swim? You weren’t moving at all!”

Thousands of years ago, they had watched a comet together over the same lake, when Japan was young enough to be only half of China’s height and innocent enough to call him big brother. Hundreds of China’s people crowded around them, crying out as the sky was carved by the beam of white light. He was younger then, and he talked too much.

“Look at them, Yao,” Japan had smiled, holding China’s left hand with his right. “Some people are acting sad now. Isn’t that interesting? They fear that one day the moment might slip from their hearts and they grieve. But I know better than them. I know that even if I forget about you, hate you, and you slip from my heart, you will always remain. You’ll be there waiting for me. You are too old—“ and China had cut him off there, whacking his head.

Mesmerized by his own memories, Japan said little, only coughing the liquid from out of his lungs and mumbling an apology. He didn’t dare look at China, paralyzed, for once more had electricity run through their touch. Everything, all of it, it was already much too beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fanfic concept being based on china being “the land of the setting sun”, yes xD


	2. play the game

It would have happened, he realized, whether he consented or not. Whether or not he agreed to open his markets to Western goods and reverse, whether or not he granted extraterritoriality or let them take it from him, in the end the result would have been the same, and the only variable was ever going to be the amount of tears and blood he shed in the process. That was why Korea had been utterly wrong.

Look at Shanghai, for instance, he thought: its downtown paved with buildings of Western architecture, its skies pierced by clock towers struck with Roman numerals, its affairs directed by Europeans in some twisted ventriloquism of a once East Asian city.

“It doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he told China, with both Shanghai and the clothes he has in one hand on mind. 

China eyed it warily, as if Japan was holding another British treaty. “It’s… it’s a suit, Kiku,” he said.

“I know what a suit is,” Japan replied, rubbing the tag which was indeed spelled out in Latin script. “I learned English, remember?”

“You sound so cheerful,” China sighed. “It really isn’t fitting for the situation, though I suppose you’ve come not to see the West as a strange thing anymore.”

He reached over and flicked Japan’s epaulette. “Look at you now,” China grimaced. “Wearing these things so casually. It’s even got a damn cape. That’s too much, even for me with my fancy emperor clothes that you used to call wasteful.”

“I can take the cape off if it bothers you that much,” Japan said with amity. Almost to poke some fun at the other nation, he flipped some of the violet fabric over his shoulder, the movement so quick that the chrysanthemum embroidered on the back must have flickered.

Japan pushed some round spectacles onto China’s face and pulled the blazer through his arms. The dark stained cotton slid silently against the dress shirt that the other had been even more reluctant to wear.

“Turn around one more time, please. I’m going to tie a bow around your neck.”

“But what are the glasses for?” China wondered aloud. “Ah, they don’t change my vision. Are these fake?” He squinted, nose twitching as he tried to discern any difference.

“Yes,” Japan affirmed. He raised a hand before his mouth, just in case he wasn’t able to stifle his laughter. “Keep them on, they make you look like America.”

“This is worse than your cape,” China grumbled.

Japan let the tips of his fingers slide down from China’s shoulders to his midriff, and then he buttoned the suit jacket. “It’s called an accessory. You’ll learn to like them, Yao.”

The old kingdom shot him a dry look, and the little rise of the corner of his mouth made it nearly sardonic. “Are you seriously lecturing me as to what an accessory is? I think your little love affair with the West is getting to your head.”

And with the same disdain, China slapped Japan’s hand away, turning his back to the mirror in front of him.

“I look so strange. I refuse to go out like this,” he mumbled. 

And Japan would have responded; he would have noticed how China was acting unusually shy and playfully teased him about it, if not for the damn tension that kept running through their skin these days, distracting Japan to the point of irritation. This time, that irritation was further compounded by China’s dismissal of all the work that Japan had put into his own liberation, which had been so dubbed “a little love affair.”

“You treat me like a child,” Japan bit back, “but you don’t seem to mind humiliating me. What, do you think I’m fucking America and England behind your back or something?”

China whipped his head back, so that Japan could see the angry look on his face. “Where the hell did that come from? What’s wrong with you, Kiku?”

“You have no patience for anything!”

“You have no patience for me,” China hissed back. “Don’t you understand how difficult this is for me?” He practically ripped the blazer off of himself. 

“Put that back on,” Japan growled. “They won’t want to see you in oriental clothes during the discussion. This wouldn’t be so painful if you were even marginally less proud!”

China scoffed. “You—“ and he began with such derision that Japan couldn’t bear to let him finish his sentence; he began with such fury that it all clicked for Japan, that China would never change, and he would never trust the West after all they had done to him.

So before China could utter another word, Japan covered the other’s mouth.

“It’s fine, China,” he said, even as China shoved his hand away. “You don’t have to listen to me. After all, I no longer pay you that same courtesy.”

“This isn’t funny,” he told Japan.

But it was so funny, that China was trying to save him and he was trying to save China. He should just give up. He should just let this old, stubborn country, whom he once loved with the purity of a clear sky, sink into the mud and ruins already fertilized by the thousands upon thousands of peoples lost to history. None of it could be helped, right? Maybe this way at least some aspect of their relationship could be salvaged from the grave.

Korea had once told Japan, when Japan had asked the other about losing things, that you had to imagine all things as already lost. “If I acknowledge that this village is already gone,” he had said, pointing at a collection of bucolic people and their warm homes, “then I will appreciate it so much more right now, from the depths of my heart.*” 

Korea had lost his language, and now Japan was losing China. So to preserve his own soul, Japan let himself believe that China was already gone.

 

Their love had risen up then fallen like the sun, Japan believed.

Japan didn’t think that he would see the Qing Emperor ever again after the Restoration, let alone alongside Ito Hirobumi of all people. Yet here the two were before him, in China, in the throne room both burdened and enlightened by its centuries. Across the faces of emperor, nation, delegate, and servant, lantern light slanted equally.

It was, for lack of a better descriptor, very awkward for Japan, who hoped to get over with this formality as soon as possible. The real person they hoped to convene with was after all not the Qing Emperor himself, but his premier, Li Hongzhang. Japan thought he was much better off in Li’s office than here: the air in this room was just too thick, laden with too much tradition.

And it was Hirobumi who insisted on breaking tradition tonight. As they were being led up to the emperor, he whispered to his liege, “I will refuse to bow.”**

Japan widened his eyes. “Prime Minister. That’s unforgivable.”

Hirobumi smiled at him, a little wryly. “Stay up with me. It’s unfitting for you to bow to old China.”

“China is a fine country,” he snapped, so instinctively that it surprised him, and he raised his hand to touch his lips as if he couldn’t believe he’d let those words had come out of his mouth. “My apologies, I—“

“I agree, Japan,” Hirobumi affirmed. “You’re correct in what you say. All I argue is that you’re his equal now, so why should only one bow?”

Japan furrowed his eyebrows. “I’m not going to have enough time to convince you not to, am I?”

Hirobumi laughed quietly. “Please stand with me, my country.”

Then they were before the emperor, with China by the throne’s side, the other nation surveilling the whole thing with a tired smile. Brighter, newer expressions flashed in Japan’s head: America’s smile, and next England’s triumphant grin— and his own words came back to him, when he had told the British Empire: “And I was thinking about trying audacity for a change”. It cut him, and he was filled with resentment that he would transform himself, yet his incorrigible brother wouldn’t.

“Okay,” Japan whispered. “I will stand.” And the two men did not bow before the emperor.

The first person who noticed was China, who simply turned his head in response. The fact that Japan could not see his reaction nearly made his legs tremble with unresolved anticipation. What now? he asked his gods, and he was just about to begin praying when the Chinese attendants and ministers suddenly clamored in irritation.

Japan shut his eyes, yet the sounds of blades falling before him, blocking his further movement towards the Emperor, reached his ears. There was a loud shout in Chinese that he tried his best not to understand, and then both nation and Prime Minister were escorted out of the imperial hall.

Outside, Japan shot Hirobumi an injured look. “I told you they would not have it, my lord.”

Hirobumi rubbed his neck thoughtfully. “Perhaps not. But we did not bow before the Emperor, and we are still in the country. We will still talk to Li Hongzhang, get everything we need, then safely leave. Did we not win, then?”

“A victory,” Japan muttered.

“Of course. Modernization is not only a homeland principle, but a foreign policy principle as well.” This old statesman, of noble birth, was on his way to redirect the narrows of history. The roads he walked and the things he said would pave both honor and hatred, sometimes at once, into the heart of Asia for the next century.

Then Hirobumi turned to Japan and told him, “You won this victory over China because he was weak, but one day you will have to challenge the powerful as well. To be strong as well as lucky. That’s what we, as your servants, all hope for you.”

Japan thought he had used up all his mortal luck on the two typhoons that had, by chance six hundred years ago, destroyed the invading Mongol fleets. That time, the wind of the gods— kamikaze —had saved him. It was perhaps up to him to create his own storms now.

And Japan did become strong; he became strong enough that he could finally grasp out at the rest of the world. Japanese troops sent to help crush the Boxer Rebellion, pro-Japanese agents snuck in to manipulate Korea. Kings and presidents from dozens of other countries came to see this new rising power with their own eyes, and Japan was so desperate to please: upon an assassination attempt of Tsarvich Nicolas II by a Japanese man on Japanese land, one of his other citizens ran outside and killed herself to repent. He reached out to the foreign lands like a dying man to God, desperate to finally touch salvation. He had to save himself, he had to save everyone else.

Especially Korea, he felt. So by the 1890s he made it clear to his other brother that Chinese dominance wasn’t doing either of them any favor. Instead, Japan proposed that he would open Korea’s doors, guiding the other nation towards a better, modern future.

Korea had sneered at those intentions. “You’ve become just like them, Kiku. Trying to do with me just what America did to you!”

The frayed silk of Korea’s old robes stood out against the austerity of Japan’s pure black uniform. For a moment his eyes lingered on that long gone world. It had been a simple, happy time: warmth in Korea and China’s open arms, soft yukatas, easy sandals, long black hair pinned up. And then he saw it, a gentler version of himself: in used white silk, unbothered by matters outside his island, concerned more about the tie of his hakama than the polish of his sword hilt—

“It had to be!” a voice inside of him hissed, crushing the other Japan underfoot. “You had no choice. Besides, the world you left behind was not as perfect as you remember it to be. Do you remember, Honda Kiku, when you were completely subservient to the interests of others? When you could do nothing in this world but watch as a bystander?”

Then the voice whispered one more thing inside of his ear, so lowly that it was almost lost to the divine wind. “It’s all because of China,” it said. And Japan, nearly enraged, shoved Korea aside. 

Once China had been the dear old brother of the Japanese, having held their nation’s hand behind the shutters of bamboo leaves. Yet it had come to that, by 1894, Japan and China were to go to war. 

 

“You’ve become,” China rasped, surrounded by the ruins and cadavers of all he had lost in their war, “An imperialist not only in action, but in heart as well.”

The smell of burnt wood and destroyed bodies hacked apart with brutality (blood, in other words) permeated throughout the harbor. Within these realms lay not only the dead who chose to fight, but also the dead who chose not to: the bystanders, the villagers doing their everyday run, the children and women caught between the lines and massacres. What would the foreign journalists say? Japan didn’t even want to think about that.

He had nearly tripped over a dead townsman, heart emptied by a slick knife, on his way up the grounds. Now— fifteen minutes, a bullet to his chest and his bullet in two others later —he straddled a wounded China, whom those two soldiers had been desperately trying to guard. He sat with own sword positioned straight down at his pseudo-father’s sternum as he considered doing the same to the other as was done to that dead townsman.

“And what’s wrong with that?” he asked, tilting his head. To think that some time ago, he had felt the need to prostrate himself before the other to survive. China could not—

“Nothing. I just never thought I’d see you act just like England and the other Europeans who’ve had their way with me,” China hissed back.

“They had their way with you,” Japan said. “Because you are weak. It’s not their fault, I think.” He shut his eyes. “I will admit I used to wonder that if I were in their position, would I do the same? And here I am now, doing the same.”

“Doing the same,” China repeated.

“I’m taking Korea with me, naturally,” Japan explained. “Since the squabble over him began this war.”

He expected anger, but all China did was lean his head back, exposing the main of his throat in the process. Black hair pooled around him— even longer than Japan’s had once been —like the tail of a rooster. Now killed.

“I see.” That was all he said.

“He’ll live in my home from now and on. I will try my best to modernize him, but of course his people can get jumpy.” The tip of the sword was pressed a little harder into China’s chest, puncturing skin. “This is what I will have from my victory, among a few other things. What do you think?”

“Asking me something like that,” China murmured. “Japan, what did I do to make you hate me this much? What did I ever do?”

The question caught Japan off guard, and he could not reply for a moment, confused by the blood rushing in his own ears. “You’re too old to be asking questions about emotions after a war,” he managed. No, that’s not what I wanted to say!

“Only with you,” China breathed. “Am I like this.”

The still expression, the facade this victor had set up during the entirety of the war, the mask he hid behind until it had nearly become his own skin— it all splintered at that moment. Then the miserable groan that China let out as Japan shifted his legs shattered it completely. 

“This isn’t about you,” he said, failing not to plead. “Can’t you see that this is something I have to do? You can’t help Korea. I watched you all these years and you couldn’t!”

And fury drew itself through the cracks in his castles, finally pushing through his heart as adrenaline rushed through his veins. He pushed his blade down so hard it chipped China’s sternum, watching helplessly as the other widened his eyes and covered his mouth.

“Don’t say anything anymore,” Japan growled.

But China managed to rear his head up one more time, almost daring Japan to run him right through. Do you think out of every opponent I have faced and still face, he seemed to ask, that you can kill me? 

“You’re a fucking liar, Kiku. You don’t care about the fact that I couldn’t protect Korea. But you’re furious that I couldn’t protect you.”

No wind blew by, so on the ground remained the broken shutters and dead leaves.

“You don’t have to protect me from anything.” Japan nearly choked on his own words. Gods, what was wrong with him? “I chose to do this.” Maybe not Westernization; maybe Westernization really had to be, as the voice told him. But no one had made him go to war.

A wry smile flickered across China’s face. “Then you chose to say goodbye to me.”

And now China really was gone.

He’s in silk again, he’s in his white yukata. He’s hugging his own arms, crying out and asking why: why Japan, did you even go to war, knowing what you would have lost? Was China correct? Was what he wanted all along to remain that child, wrapped in soft fabric and illusions of eternal peace, and had he grown so resentful that it had to be him of all the Far East who had to abandon himself and play the game? 

Warmth in China’s arms. China’s guardianship. He had shed his old skin mostly to save himself, but also to save the ones he loved. Ironic was it that he became embittered enough to hurt those loved ones out of resentment of all that he had lost to protect them.

I am on the path to becoming, he thought, with horrified amusement, the alcoholic man, who drinks because he overworks because he has to take care of five younger siblings, then comes home and beats his family filled with rage at what he believes he has sacrificed for them.

It was a disgusting image, but it was only a metaphor as well. There had been economic and political incentives to his conflict with China too. He hurt China also because he had purely wanted to take. This alcoholic brother, he mused, also collects welfare benefits from his younger siblings.

Japan drew his sword out from China in a thoughtless motion, saying and doing nothing more as he got up and abandoned the scene. China dropped his head back to the floor again, unable to go after the other even if he wanted to.

So at the end of the day, China’s last words, words meant to bring this nation back home— words that had reminded him of what he really wanted: warmth —only pushed him farther from shore. Japan took China’s utterance a different way: he thought China had been pointing out his hypocrisy. But maybe sometimes hypocrisy should have stayed, for in ditching all pretenses of wanting the best for the lands of the Far East, he also severed his emotional attachment to them. 

Yet even though he sunk, he had almost discerned the other path and taken it. He had almost let the reminder of homeliness, the reminder of how, despite all his efforts, he was still ultimately alone, reach him and pull him from the deep end of the Pacific.

“I’m still so weak,” he concluded, thinking of the burning feeling under his lungs. Someone more grounded would have recognized it as emotion. And nothing more.

 

He only talked to China once more before the Qing empire fell, and it had barely been a conversation.

“Why do you follow the West?” China muttered, even though they both knew this subject was past its expiration date.

“I love them,” Japan said. His hand followed a familiar route, going up and down the gold and red of his uniform.

Then China sighed. The bruises around his eye and the cast wrapping his arm painted the image of a sickened nation, ready for a different future.

“Love isn’t admiration,” he told Japan, throwing him a look that the other didn’t catch. “Love is caring.”

Japan, for his part, said nothing.

 

あ い う え お A I U E O 

The walls of the classroom, still and colored a sterile shade of gray, closed in on three desks, two of which faced one. Wooden and scratched by pencil marks, they held a tired man and woman on one side; on the other side Japan sat right on the desk, the heels of his polished boots pressed down upon the seat. Japan waved a piece of chalk at the blackboard immediately behind him, beginning to copy the hiragana.

あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O あ い う え お A I U E O 

“Now it’s your turn,” he smiled, looking at the two before him. “Were you watching me write them? Try to copy the methodology as well.”

He leaned slightly to look over the work of the young man, whose face rested in a mask of irritation. Hiding anxiety. Korea pulled uncomfortably on the obi tied around his body, letting his nails scratch the fabric.

“Your calligraphy is good,” Japan told the other. “Now write it fifteen more times so that you do not forget.”

あああああああああああああああ

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

“What’s the point of this?” Korea scowled

Japan shrugged. “My universities and my textbooks are all in Japanese. It would do you some good to look through a few of those.”

“If I wanted to study like a Westerner, I’d go to Europe myself,” he huffed.

Taiwan, who had been the last one in the room, frowned. “Be nice, Korea. His universities have their own specialties too.” 

“You don’t need to reassure me,” Japan said.

She only returned a wary look in reply. “I’m not trying to. I’m only trying to make this room a less miserable place.”

He now loomed over her desk, pulling the sheet she’d been writing on right out from under her pen and holding it up to his face. 

ああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああ

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

He looked at her for a while like he was lost and she was his mother, but then broke his gaze and shook his head. “This is also excellent,” he said. “You should start practicing the next character.”

Since 1853, she had grown up to be a young lady with a penchant for long skirts and flowers in her hair. It had shocked Japan to see her double in age appearance wise, mostly because it was a possible sign that she, as a country, was somehow budding onto the national stage.

She had also grown less naive and more sarcastic, which Japan supposed tended to happen to human character, even if they weren’t really human. Sometimes, behind the paper walls of Japan’s imperial residences, he could see her and Korea’s silhouettes moving together, laughing like there wasn’t a care in the world.

It was not as if they never laughed like that with him. But it was something that he had already prepared himself to let go of.

Taiwan smiled too brightly. “Yes, Big Brother.”

Korea rubbed his head, pulling a gloomy expression at the blackboard. “At this point I would rather hear you lecture about your universities.”

いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

“Maybe Kiku’s universities will be just like France’s one day.” Taiwan leaned her chin against her hand. “I’d like to see Kiku in a monocle and mustache, giving a lecture to blue eyed students.”

“Even if he wore a monocle and grew a mustache,” Korea sniffed, “and even if his schools turned European in every single way except heritage, I bet they still would never send their students here. They will never accept him.”

Japan furrowed his eyebrows. “Is this about the book you saw the other day?”

“Hm, what book?” Taiwan asked.

“It was a lot of books,” Korea said. “For example, this one, Taiwan. A bestselling French novel about a young Japanese woman who suffers from the—“ and Korea pitched his voice to sound oh so woeful, definitely mocking “—shockingly xenophobic horrors of East Asian society. Luckily the foreign man she temporarily marries is here to assuage her wounds.”

“It’s a memoir, and a true story,” Japan retorted. “Don’t act like our societies aren’t burdened by their vices.”

Korea turned his head. “She would have found no better welcome living in America or Europe.”

“They are only depicting the truth,” Japan said.

“That doesn’t give them a right to look down on our societies for doing something they did until recently, or still do,” Korea snapped. “When a European is violent, greedy, and stupid, he is simply one unfortunate man. When an Asian does the same, all of sudden his entire people are the problem! You see it in the newspapers, don’t you? They call you and your men barbarians for what you have done in the war, and that doesn’t mean they aren’t depicting the truth. You are, Kiku. But they do the same thing as you to the rest of the world, yet they are of the enlightened.”

“They do have the right to look down on us for the time being,” Japan growled. “At least they dream of concepts like democracy over there. Do you even know anything about West European society? Welfare, clean streets, parliaments, cars, and happy people. I can’t expect them to look at me the same way as they look at each other when I’m still a work in progress.”

“You can,” Korea said. “It’s called not being a goddamn hypocrite.”

“Their hearts are in the right place, which is already a step ahead of us,” Japan insisted, the chalk beginning to chip under the pressure with which he pressed it against the board.

うううううううううううううううううううううううう  
うううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううううう  
うううううううううううううううううううううううう

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

“So,” Taiwan suddenly interrupted, holding up her sheet of hiragana between Korea and Japan’s glaring faces, “What was that book even called?”

Japan blinked, seeming almost a bit lost again. “Madame Chrysanthème, by Pierre Loti.”

Korea shrugged. “We can translate it as Miss Kiku. How ironic.”

ええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええ

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Taiwan pressed her fingers against her writing, smearing the ink. “I want to read it now. Someone order me a copy, please.”

おおおおおおおおおお

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Even words he did not believe in still stung him.

“Whether you’re China’s dog or Europe’s dog, you’ll always just be a dog to the world,” the voice told him.

“Shut up,” Japan said, hitting the pillow with his fist and trying to go back to sleep.

Then time flew by like a breeze.

 

During a bilateral conference in 1902, England grabbed Japan by the forearm, pulling him close to other. “Japan, let’s get married.”

“What?” Japan hissed, his face lighting up red in protest. His normally controlled expression tended to crumble when he was caught this off guard. Not even his geishas got their cheeks as red as this.

Japan’s ministers looked up, some seeming as embarrassed as their nation, others going pale in irritation or anxiousness. Nor did the English side seem to enjoy their country’s declaration any more.

The awkward silence that resulted was almost humorous, Japan thought. Even Hirobumi glanced up at the two of them, blinking a bit. That poor old man.

His mind drifted back to England’s less than innocent suggestion; how could it not, as England pressed closer to him, entirely disregarding Japan’s notion of personal space, and maybe even his own.

The idea of a union between their two countries was not a new one: both were impressive naval powers with a track record of victory. Even if Japan’s triumphs were considerably smaller-scaled, the English nation had repeatedly sent him congratulations over them: first his modernization, then his participation in the Boxer Rebellion, and finally his success in the Sino-Japanese War.

Japan had not known how to react. Part of him flushed with delight at approval from the greatest power of Europe, the greatest power in the world. Yet there had also been the apprehension of whether it was sincere or not: it was so easy to talk about how much you cared.

Now that that tentative notion was a real consideration; England exposed both his candor and his statesmen’s machinations with his proposal of marriage. In easy terms, he wanted to use Japan’s fleet to protect his Asian colonies. In larger terms, Japan had earned enough recognition to be of equal merit to this superpower. 

He used to not give much thought to England since the times of Sir Harris, despite their generally cordial relations. His best friend these days somehow really did end up becoming America instead, ironic considering that his and America’s Pacific ambitions seemed en route to collide one day. 

He told America this once, and America had laughed a genuine laugh that came from the back of his throat. “Your generals are damn paranoid, Kiku.”

“Are you even awake?” England teased, snapping his fingers in front of Japan’s face. Had he been zoning out? How embarrassing! The Eastern nation shoved the England’s hand out of his face, feeling like he might be able to boil eggs on his face soon.

“Evidently I am,” Japan snapped back, and then he immediately considered crawling into a hole. Being so rude to a potential ally like that— he didn’t dare look at his statesmen’s reactions.

“It’s just a lot to take in,” Japan clarified, turning his head.

“You’re a lot to take in yourself,” England said. “But I’m sure it’s in a good way. I’m serious about the alliance, you know. It’s something that would be of great benefit to both of us.”

“So that’s all you mean by marriage,” Japan murmured. “I see.”

“If you want to get into a wedding dress, I wouldn’t mind,” England snorted. “You’re pretty and about as tall as a girl anyway. Ow!”

Japan didn’t remove the fingers twisting England’s ear. “Get used to the average height in Asia. I thought all your ‘Eastern adventures’ would have gotten you accommodated already.”

England looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. “So you remembered my words. You’re always looking for a challenge, aren’t you?”

Japan opened his mouth to reply, but before he managed to, the sound of someone clearing their throat interrupted him.

Japan turned his head to see Lord Lansdowne, British foreign secretary, standing up surveying the two nations with a curious look. “Well, I’m glad the two of you get along.” Japan glanced at England, who conveniently looked away.

“Japan,” Lansdowne further addressed. “I hope you know that this really is a special occasion. Great Britain hasn’t had an alliance with a great power for a while now; we could even call this the end of Splendid Isolation.”

So England had again vacillated between his past, alone and safe across the English Channel, and his future, reaching out past hazy gray skies and grasping the entire planet by its marionette strings.

Hirobumi stood up too. “Nothing is official yet,” he reminded. “But this looks to be the brightest path with today’s circumstances.”

Today’s circumstances. In other words, if Russia and his tsar continued their hostility to Japan’s hegemony on the Korean Peninsula, refusing to put peace feelers out, forcing Japan into a situation where he needed all the strength he could get.

 

“Congratulations,” Lord Lansdowne beamed, the day the treaty was signed in his own manor. “We have formalized the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Let’s drink to future renewals and sturdy friendships.”

“Look at that, love,” England said to Japan. “You really did marry me.”

And Japan’s heart blew up with five thousand emotions: this European who he had once hated from the bottom of his heart now came to offer him the one shelter he had longed for for centuries, something not even China had ever dared to grant him: a hand, a ring, an acknowledgment of equality.

Two flags of red and white crossed in harmony. Japanese children lining the streets with British flags in hand. Kimigayo played side to side with God Save the King.

Warmth. Humanity.

 

“Do you love me, Arthur?” Japan was looking for the moon. 

The moon that had to rise, after the fall of his old sun.

Could England be that purifying lunar light? The tongue of the Western nation licked up Japan’s inner thigh, drawing a groan from the other. England blinked his blond lashes at the Asian curiously, before letting out a snort.

“Are you not going to answer?” Japan glared at the Englishman.

“Go guess first, dear,” England said dryly.

That got him a light kick in the back, and Japan pulled back and closed his legs in annoyance. “Answer me.”

England just rolled his eyes. “Of course I do. I know you were knocked off the stage for two thousand years, but I assure you that not all alliances get this intimate.”

“Why us then?” Japan wondered.

The other shrugged. “A lot of things. For one, we understand each other. Now, open your legs and let me finish.” Japan obeyed, but the troubled look remained on his countenance.

England sighed into the crook of Japan’s knee. “I like your eyes, your hair, your skin, your hands, your back, your ankles. But we’ve all seen too many pretty bodies for them to be a novelty.”

“What I really like,” he smiled to Japan. “Is your soul.”

“What a corny thing to say,” Japan replied, and England huffed, the warmth of his breath tickling Japan and making him grab the sheets. 

“You’re the one who asked, Kiku,” he reminded. “Besides, wanting your soul isn’t necessary a kind thing. Isn’t it what demons say too?” 

How had England become so attractive to him, anyway? Japan had pretty much fallen in love with the other, on the spot, the day he had pulled Japan over by the arm, another crack in the walls Japan didn’t even realize were around him. 

Back in the 1860s, when England was just another Westerner to him, America had answered the same question from his own perspective. “I like England, because of many small things,” he had said thoughtfully.

As a human, Japan also had many small things to love about England. As a nation, he longed most of all for the burning sting of England’s power, stretching from sea to sea.

 

Japan was still looking for the moon.

“You’re about to go to war with Russia?” America wheezed, two glasses of wine in. “Damn, you’re crazy.”

He shut his eyes. “Astute analysis, Alfred.”

“I know, right. That Harvard degree I got in the 18th century is really shining through.” America tapped the crown of his head teasingly, and Japan laughed softly.

“Do you think I can handle it?” Japan asked.

“Who knows?” America grinned. “But strength comes from the heart, whether it’s a good heart or not. Kiku, I want to tell you something funny before you leave, all right?”

“All right,” Japan said. 

The blond drummed his nails against his knees. “The most important thing is the world,” he told Japan, “Is the connections we make with other people, nations included. This is what they talk about when they say the meaning of life is love, Kiku.”

Japan gave him a curious look. “Are you telling me to keep trying to reconcile with Russia?”

America nodded. “But I understand if you two don’t. It’s not easy or anything. Sometimes I wonder how different life would be if I would just push through and follow my own advice.”

Then he squinted his blue eyes at Japan, like he was scrutinizing him. Did I do something wrong? Japan wondered.

“You and Kirkland recently made this real interesting alliance, right?”

Japan affirmed it with a nod.

America then leaned back, and closed his eyes. “Good. I’m happy for you,” he sighed.

 

But there was no reconciliation before 1904.

“So I’ll send warships to help neuter the threat of the Russian navy,” England whistled.

Japan rubbed the side of his neck, shyed by the generosity. “Thank you so much, Arthur.”

“You look like you need it. No offense.”

Japan let England’s fingers linger under his chin and tilt his head up. “None taken. This war has done quite a toll on me.” 

“Good thing your parents consented to our marriage, so I could help you,” England replied, amused.

“My father isn’t Hirobumi,” Japan snorted. “It’s more like China than anything, but even then, not really. Actually, let’s please not talk about fatherhood, since you’re the metaphorical dad of my best friend.”

“Hm. Alfred is your best friend? That’s funny, dear.”

“So star crossed, aren’t we?” 

England coughed. “Speaking of America, since we’re now married, you have to tell me what he says about me.”

“Fine,” Japan allowed. “I’ll tell you something he said about you recently.” England’s face seemed to light up a bit. That’s funny, dear, Japan mimicked in his own head.

“I asked him once, do you like England because he’s powerful? And he told me, of course not, I like him less because of that, and he questioned me why in the world he would ever love you for that when it makes you so much more obnoxious? Then he said, no, I like England because he’s smart and good at making toy soldiers, I like England because he has a kind side even if he has to hide it, and most of all I like him because in each other's presence we can just _live_ , talking about God knows what together for days on end.”

England did not say anything for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

“That kind of love is strange, isn’t it, Kiku?”

“I believe so,” Japan said.

China doesn’t, he thought.


	3. drought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few more notes:  
> Wilson - American President in 1919  
> Clemenceau - French Prime Minister in 1919  
> Lloyd George - British Prime Minister in 1919

Russia hung his head, his bruises pressing against the golden carpets of the Winter Palace, running from his neck to the purple color of his fingers and nail beds. Now, on the deathbed of the Russian Empire, Ivan wondered who he was. But who was he to even ask such a question? There were much simpler questions to ask; questions that did not challenge the inescapability of that fate he had long accepted.

For example, he could ask, what time is it? And the servants and his sisters would tell him, oh Russia, today is 1905, the year of the Russian defeat by Japan. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already. Don’t tell me you fell that hard.

He could have fallen harder, really. He could have fallen harder and hissed and snarled at the blow to his imperial glory— how could he lose to a nation who had hardly been on the map before the 1900s? What weaknesses it exposed to the rest of Europe, watching with amazed and fearful eyes. But for some reason, he felt no shame, his pride seeming to have disappeared.

Good riddance. His pride had always failed him anyway. Nowadays he didn’t want to talk about pride anymore; he wanted to talk about the simple things, like bread.

So Russia asked his Tsar, who was sitting cross legged across his nation on the edge of his canopied bed, “Isn’t communism interesting?”

In response, the Tsar, Nicholas II, grabbed for the sword at his side instinctively. “Not really, but go on,” he whispered. “Is that how you feel?”

Russia really did love the Romanovs. “What I feel?" he snorted. "I feel like I might literally turn red, from head to toe. But I suppose better red with revolution than red with fire.”

Nicholas rubbed his forehead, and a miserable expression threatened to overwhelm his face. “Please, Ivan.”

Russia laughed. “I apologize, my lord, but I can’t help it. The people are going a little mad. Tsar, you shouldn’t have entered the war; Tsar, this isn’t the will of God. That’s what they’re saying. It gets to even me.”

“I see,” Nicholas said. “But I had to do it. I had to check the Yellow Peril, didn’t I, slowly crawling up north, threatening your manifest destiny— your prophecy to conquer the East!”

Russia grabbed his ruler’s forearm over the uniform. Under the fabric lay black ink on pale skin: a dragon tattoo looping and curling under the dermis.

“You got that in Japan, didn’t you? When you were just a young man.”

Nicholas shrugged. “A teenager, yes. Japan was an… interesting place.”

“I was just thinking that now we have something in common,” Russia beamed. “Look at this. After Bloody Sunday, a band of revolutionaries kidnapped me, and—“

Nicholas choked. “What, really? How could it have ever gotten this awful?”

His nation only blinked at him with his snowy eyelashes. “It’s been this awful for a while, my lord. As I was saying, these revolutionaries. They branded my back with a hammer and sickle, so harshly that I’ll never be able to get it off.” Russia grinned. “How about I consider this my own tattoo from Japan?”

“This isn’t funny,” Nicholas muttered. “I’m going to gut all those fools. Oh, why communism, of all things?”

“Our people just want to throw off the past, you know?” Russia said. “They long for a new order. But aren’t democracy and individualism such Western concepts? I never felt like I was a real part of the West, not even after Peter the Great banned beards and told me to stop wearing flower shoes. Maybe our people don’t either.”

Russia gently pressed his hand over this chest, crushing the aiguillette he now found utterly out of place. “They want to turn over what we once believed was the unavoidable cruelty of human nature. They want to create a fortunate country, a red empire, the first of its kind. They just want to protect the people that they love. You can say that they seek modernization, but not of the Western type.”

“I cannot exist besides any sort of modernization, be it occidental or Eastern. People like me belong to the old world. So tell me you can’t stand this either, Ivan.”

Russia weaved his hands under his scarf, thinking of the bad times he’d lived before; bad times like these. He tilted his head.

“But I don’t mind, Nicholas,” his nation confessed.

The servants of the hallways usually did not catch the small talk that indiscriminately leaked out of the Tsar’s bedroom. This one evening they had actually dared to try, yet they found only silence awaiting them.

 

Japan sometimes looked at himself in the mirror and asked if it was worth it.

The post victory period was an odd time for him; it was a rite of passage that had ruptured into a thousand petals before he even learned how to pick flowers. How bizarre it was to see his men and women drop their traditional clothes for a more Western fashion, and then to notice that the post war excitement had made kimonos a trend in the United States. The world baulked at his success, shunned the Russians, awarded him with both admiration and suspicion. People of color wondered if their nations could one day beat a European power as well.

He loved it, reveled in it. Then he slid his shirt off and saw the literal gaping void in his chest, a bullet wound right below his heart that had never closed, and he hated it.

Young Yoshihito, Mutsuhito’s child and heir to the chrysanthemum throne, liked to run his finger through the hole, and ask Japan if he was still human.

Perhaps it was rightfully symbolic. Perhaps he really had lost a part of himself for good. The triumph was nearly pyrrhic: it wrecked him, drained his resources, killed his young men and created a Lost Generation that wrote sad literature and questioned what sadder things lay ahead this long, imperial road. The war had gutted him so severely that he seriously kissed America when the other offered to mediate a peace conference and end the whole bloody affair.

And even if he slept the sleep of the victor, and even if Russia came out of it worse, none of that explained why the war and the conquest that had preceded it had even been a good idea in the first place. Why was this coldness in his core was any better than the lonely solitude he lived in before 1853? What even was the thing he had wanted from the very beginning? Had he ever made any progress?

Japan shook his head. He had so much under his grasp right now, so much he would not forsake. He had the power to grant his own wishes now, no longer waiting upon the saving grace of a shooting star. He had been and still was backed by the powerful British Empire, and he was cheered on by much of the West, who distrusted Russia more than they distrusted him. Was this acceptance, at least in some form, at least more than he had ever known from them? Was it belonging? If it was, and only if it was, could he justify it to the mothers and the fathers, and say yes, it was worth it.

 

“The sun and the moon are forever chasing each other,” read China. “From East to West they follow the track… since they were born, and until they die. They were joined upon the creation of the Earth…”*

China closed the book and shook his head, laughing a little to himself. “I used to believe in all these sorts of old folk tales. Really, I believed. Those were the days when I was truly a living relic.”

China smiled brightly. “I don’t really know where any one’s taking me, but I’m sure it's towards somewhere I need to be. The overthrow of the Emperor! That kind of thing has to mark a new era.”

Finally, China blinked, tilting his head slightly. “Hey, Japan,” he said to the nation sitting besides him on the ancient banks of West Lake, “you’re being really quiet today.”

“I’m chewing,” Japan said, covering his mouth so the maybe hundredth dumpling China had shoved into him today wouldn’t fall out. “Sorry. Keep talking.”

“You’re so serious,” China said. “I don’t remember you being like this. I remember you being shy and cute.”

“You tended to patronize me a bit,” Japan muffled, becoming slightly shy but probably not cute. “Though you seem like a different person now.”

“I really am not, but I agree that it feels that way.” Crickets chirped in their lazy peace, and Japan closed his eyes. 

Suddenly, China spoke up once more. “If you see me that way, as no longer that old, tired man, then you can grant me a favor.”

“Hm?”

China slapped his shoulder lightly, causing Japan to lift his eyes open again and glance at the other warily. “Do this for me, Japan,” China declared. “Don’t think of me as a father anymore. I don’t know where either of us are going, but I’m sure we’ll be forever chasing each other too. So I want to start anew with you again.”

Japan’s confused expression twisted into a grimace. “Do you really want to? After our war?”

“I have done the same to others before,” China shrugged. “Ah, aren’t we all terrible people? That’s part of why I like to pretend I am and like to hear you call me a new China. I have a lot of sins to run from too.”

His skin wasn’t pale like it used to be, and he wasn’t as thin as he used to be. He was cheery and radiant again, the China Japan knew upon their first encounter, the China Japan had known during the other’s happiest dynasties. And so he had crawled from the beaten tomb of antiquity once more, as did the phoenix on its eternal journey. 

Was this how China had survived five thousand years as a vast, continental country? Running, running— despite broken bones and heartstrings, China kept on running.

 

Don’t think of me as a father anymore, China had said, shooting a slightly crooked smile in Japan’s way as he spoke. Just like that, thousands of years of pacified emotions bubbled to the surface and popped. Those words, which China had never uttered until now, allowed Japan —young on the world stage and inexperienced with love affairs— a truly awful realization: that China had given him a green light.

He’d be lying if he said he became smitten with China in the 1910s as they began to spend more time together, as they watched Beijing operas and Japanese nō, as they awaited sakura blossoms and breaks of luck in mahjong, drinking sake off of each other’s hands. No, he could never put a finger on the date; perhaps he had loved the other nation with such a passion since the day they first met.

Electricity as they touched. Ultraviolet rays beamed by the ancient sun. China laughing too hard as he got too drunk. “Japan,” he sighed in the evening, barely able to keep his grip on his cup, “I always knew you’d be the one to ruin me.”

And Japan choked on his own drink, that having come out of nowhere. He wanted to reassure the other, to say, no, I never would, but the words caught themselves in his throat and wouldn’t come past his lips.

China simply snorted at Japan’s silence. “Not because you’re evil or anything. But because I care about you too much, yeah? No matter what you do ... I’ve already grown too attached.”

“China,” he managed, feeling like he was spiraling around the abyss in his chest. “I love you.”

The other did not reply verbally for a second, before he pressed their foreheads together. Japan felt himself pale with excitement. He looked China right into his golden eyes, and they were just so close.

In that moment, it occurred to him that this, the gentle heat rolling off China’s skin and the unforgiving beat of his own heart, was everything he wanted.

“I know,” said China.

And it still felt like paradise, but China’s last words nearly slighted Japan, for they came without requital, without a promise. Really, Japan did not need such a thing; since when had love necessitated commitment, anyway?

But it made Japan wonder what if would be like if China did give him such commitment, even if Japan was unwilling to return it. It made Japan wonder what it would be like to be the one in control. For a second he imagined being God for once, and not the beggar with his knees beaten against the shrine floor.

Japan loved China’s warmth. Still, he began to dream of something hotter, something willing to scald them both.

 

In late 1912, Mutsuhito, Japan’s last Confucian sovereign, died. The future generation pricking their young hands on the lanterns left out for his funeral would remember him by his era name, Meiji, meaning “enlightened rule”. Wasn’t it fitting, Japan asked himself.

Who had Meiji been? To the world and to history, a figurehead more than a man or an actual ruler. Yet Japan had grown up with him, had followed his father, had watched him from the dawn of the Bakumatsu to the fruition of New Japan. He still had fond memories of when they had to disguise young Meiji as a woman to save him from rebelling samurai in the old 1850s, and when, in the 1870s, Meiji had taught Honda how to stop painting his teeth black.

And now? He was gone, reminding the island that time would always spill over, then run out.

His successor, Yoshihito, was disobedient and troubled, afflicted with mental illness in an epoque without the resources to treat it. People would say his saving grace was being born to do all except rule.

But it’s not your fault, Japan liked to tell this king. You couldn’t help it. If only you were born in a different time, if only someone could have healed you, if only the circumstances hadn’t failed you. 

Would that have made you a good emperor?

Sickness was sometimes the loneliest thing in the universe. So for Yoshihito, Japan let himself cry.

 

One day, Europe immolated itself. 

Cathedrals bells rang and soldiers marched from their homes, singing the Marseillaise and das Deutschlandlied, sailing straight into the coffins that awaited them on the ruined land their enemies once called home.

“Perhaps,” England had bit cynically after the Somme, resting in a surgery bed as Japan sat nearby, “You can only crowd so many silly ambitions into one continent before it blows itself up.” 

It was not as if soldiers had never died by the hundreds of thousands, going right from the arms of family and lovers to the arms of God, but that was no consolation. For so many people, as the earth was set alight, as the white streaks of artillery barrages mimicked wishing stars and smoked over the ancient beauty of the night sky, the world had lost its soul.

But for all of that, the Great War was not bad to Japan. His industry blossomed, as the Pacific shielded him, his people, and his economy from harm. Nor did he really engage in combat. But though he did not help the Allies too greatly, he also had not hindered them, and his presence simply as a formidable world power on the Allied side was enough for them to see him as a valuable friend.

It should have been an honor, then, to have been selected as one of the Great Five of the Allied Powers, alongside Britain, France, America, and Italy. It should have been the signal that he was ready to join the rest of the world in America’s League of Nations, aiming to pave a happy, peaceful forwards road in which countries would no longer have to play the old game by its old rules. What America wanted, after all, was not to resurrect that missing heart of the world, rather to create it anew.

But there were still imperialists. There was still the past that could not be thrown off, no matter how desperately the young hearts of the world desired it.

 

“Tonight,” America said, “we drink to the end of an era. We drink to Wilhelm and we drink to Wilson.”

Japan watched his companion’s throat bob, as he wiped his own mouth with the white fabric of his dress shirt cuff. He wouldn’t want to be obvious after all; he couldn’t allow champagne to spill out his mouth the way tears nearly threatened to overfill America’s blue eyes.

“I can’t understand why you’re so sad,” Japan murmured. “Unlike the other Allies, the both of us managed to come out as victors of this war, didn’t we? You should be excited. Your dream will be realized soon.”

“I’m sad because I’m becoming just like my father,” America sighed. “Isn’t that something all young men get upset by? People are starting to fancy me as some sort of a ‘global policeman’. England first owned that title, you know. I’m strong but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that power. I’m more self-sufficient of a country than you so I could stay alone if I wanted to. But do I want to? Do I really want to? That was England’s predicament too.”

“Besides,” he went on lowly, “Don’t be like that.”

Japan smiled nervously. He’d been swishing the rest of the champagne in his glass, feeling too jumpy to drink it. “Like what, America?”

“Like you don’t understand the post war blues,” he replied, gently flicking Japan’s forehead with his fingers. “Kiku, you’re miserable too.”

He can see right through me, Japan thought, disquieted. Yes, he’s always been able to look through me like I was a piece of glass.

Japan, looking out at the world with lonely and glazed eyes, had always hated people like Alfred: people who were tossing darts for fun but managed to hit the target anyway.

England really was the same way, and maybe most imperialists were. Flirting with the affairs of over half this world, from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to Canada to Afghanistan, and each time he knocked the bullseye. He nailed it just right and stole the hearts and futures of nations without even realizing the extent of what he had taken. Japan had promised to never let himself be stolen like that, and yet, just like those other colonies, he couldn’t help but be bound to those who ended up pathetically casting him aside.

Unrequited by China, and now by England, who so clearly loved America more than he did his old husband. Could he blame England? No. Nevertheless, no one could stop him from being bitter.

“You see right through me,” Japan echoed to America. “How charming of you.”

“Are you trying to be coy?” The American asked, amused. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please?” He sounded so convincing.

“It’s not a serious problem.” Japan nearly hesitated. “But sometimes I get lonely. England and I don’t really talk that much anymore. It’s fine though, because it means he can spend more time with you.”

A guilty expression flooded America’s countenance. “That wasn’t my intention. It’s because— he just wanted me to help him with the war.”

“No, I understand. It’s not a bad thing,” Japan retorted. “You’re the one who’s in love with him, right? Everyone can see how strongly you two imprinted onto one another; he spun your fate, then you spun his. If he’d let himself be, then he’s yours.”

America looked down glumly. “I won’t let you give up anything. We’re too selfish for that.”

“I can’t give up what I don’t have. Besides, I’m not afraid of happiness.” Were I, he thought, I wouldn’t have let China get close to me again, let alone feed me dumplings on that riverbed.

It was one A.M. now, so late. Neither of them had dared to bring it up, but they both left the bar that night knowing that their own connection was also fading, and just as quickly. There were only so many conflicting ambitions that one relationship would take.

Once upon a time, America pierced right through Japan, and Japan loved him. Once upon a time, Japan had chosen America out of the entire Occident, and the blond who felt different from the other side of the Atlantic finally got to embrace someone on the West Coast.

They would leave a tip for the bartender in the wake of their parting. And, though no one knew it yet, they were soon to reunite, fated to trail behind them the universe’s greatest Pacific tragedy.

 

He remembered it clearly now; yes, he had always wanted Imperial China.

During the Han Dynasty, when Japan was young, he, Taiwan, and Korea used to chase each other around the garden decorated in China’s most expensive robes. He recalled that if China would count the stains on his clothes, and if it clocked in over five, then he would find any one of the three and yell at them loudly. His ears would be flushed red with anger, his golden eyes livid, and all they would do was laugh, yet he had never hit them. He would almost, sometimes, raising a hand in the air like he was signaling the wind to stop, but he never did.

The time China had probably gotten the closest was when Japan completely ruined the Empress’s coronation robes in a later dynasty. He had slipped into the outfit then jumped off a willow tree, letting the branches claw through precious silk like a tiger mauling flesh.

“You’re too old for this, Kiku!” China had cried out, looking like he was in pain. “How much have you destroyed just for your stupid game?”

Japan had stared down at the strands, pulled apart and frizzy. “I’m not trying to be bad,” he muttered, searching his shoes for an excuse. “I... just wanted to see what it’d be like if _we_ got married, just as the Dragon Emperor and his Empress do.”

It wasn’t like he was trying to diffuse China with that. It had really just been the first thing on his tongue. But the other nation then blushed so hard that he pulled the messed-up cloth over his face, letting out a muffled scream. Imperial China retreated to another room and didn’t come out for days.

 

“China, may we get married?” Japan wondered.

China snorted. “哎呀, look at you. Getting so crass just because you beat Germany out of my old land.”

“Is that a no, then?” Japan sighed. China laughed quietly.

Can he not even imagine that I’d ask such a thing? Japan asked himself.

The Chinese province of Shantung, birthplace of Confucius, bordered the edges of the Yellow Sea, its body jutting out from the mainland in a cul-de-sac. The peninsula had in the 1900s passed a good while as a German region ‘of influence’. Then, during the Great War, Japan had surrounded and defeated the Germans at their fort in Qingdao. It was among that of which China referred to, when he spoke of “my old land”.

“I’m serious,” he tried once more. “I don’t mean a political alliance either.”

China reached over and pinched Japan’s cheek. “Okay. Say we get married, and go to Vietnam for our honeymoon. Then in 1919 we both have to leave and go to the Paris Peace Conference. We’ll probably argue a bit. Or a lot. Then we go home and return to being a country with our ancient obligations, realizing that there was never any purpose for spiteful immortals like us to wed.”

“We’re most definitely going to argue a lot in Paris, since I’m going to keep Shantung for myself,” Japan corrected.

China didn’t even flinch. “Okay,” he replied.

What kind of a reaction is that? Japan thought to himself. He must have guessed my intentions already then, that I was taking it from the Germans, not returning it to him. “You couldn’t protect yourself for me. So don’t expect me to protect you either.”

China laughed again, but this time it sounded bitter. “Is that the story you’re going to spin, Japan? That it hurt you so much to see Europe hurt me that you came to hate me for it? And how you’ve come back to show the world how you’ll wreck me yourself?”

“Give me a break,” he snarled.

“You’re still weak,” the island smiled. “That’s all there is to it.” His fingers drummed against the rail of the bridge they stood on, wrist bumping against that same dress shirt cuff. “Well, our grace period was awfully short, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t want to talk anymore.”

It was such a gorgeous day looking off from this wide stone bridge, whose material was as light as bone and just as delicately made. Reeds poked out adventurously from the water underneath, pretending to be the children of this 12th century relic.

“What’s this bridge called, anyway?” he asked China.

China ignored him.

Japan shrugged. “Do you want to know what Westerners remember it by? They call it the Marco Polo Bridge, because Marco Polo really took a liking to it. That’s why I want to be just like them. Say, if I like it and it feels good,” he murmured, “Can it too be mine?”

 

Nations had traditions of occupation. Export of raw materials and import of “motherland” goods, for example, was a common one for nearly all conquistadors. But Japan liked simple things too, and he wanted to offer a simple custom between himself and his conquered. So he had China cook him dumplings, every single morning.

China said nothing. The only interaction he would have with Japan was to feed the other in silence, which he was insistent upon for one reason or another. Japan opened his mouth wide and let him.

Afterwards, Japan would take a trip to the restaurant district, but he would return to China’s house quickly. After all, if he wanted to do this each day, he had to make it quick. So he ran back everything that he had bought on his leather shoes and its clattering heels, hauling back lamb skewers, steamed buns, biang biang mian, ice cream, 糖葫芦.

He found himself so hungry, usually eating it all in one sitting. He gorged like he was compensating for something, like he was paying back the debt of centuries. All while China watched on and ate nothing.

 

Japan can never retell 1919 properly. World War I, perfectly fine, but then right before the Treaty of Versailles his memories pull to a stop.

Nowadays, whenever he’s asked, he says, “it was just a bad time for me.” Not out of humility, but because he would probably embarrass himself, tripping the minefield of his own feelings he’s set up, were he to try to explain. Such clumsiness had certainly happened when he’d accounted the tale to Hirohito and his generals for the first time.

Though whether he could account it professionally or not did not change the past. Some of the most degrading years of his life began with him sitting on that Council of Five, feeling proud not to be among all the meeker nations that the Allied peacemakers cared little about, yet absolutely hot in the face at everything else. He likes to count all that went wrong on one hand, then pretend to claw America or England or really anyone’s eyes out, telling them if they didn’t want to look at him then, they shouldn’t bother to look at him now.

 

He began by telling the generals that they were better off imagining the lovely cluttered city that Paris by themselves. You can’t see foreign lands from other people’s eyes, he insisted. It’s why other people’s pictures seem bland while your own are incredibly memorable.

“But if you’re curious, Hirohito,” he was saying, as his Emperor watched him curiously, “My favorite place was the Sacre-Coeur.”

Never mind. He should just spare them the pleasantries and stretch out his palm. He liked to start from the pinky, so he bent it down first.

 

一。

It was kind of awkward even before Japan had stepped into the conference room. He was informed beforehand that the Peace Conference was to be held in English and French for all the deliberations. From the get go, he realized that his delegates would have a harder time understanding or commenting, which was fine, he supposed. Most of the affairs were about Europe, Africa, or the Middle East anyway, of which Japan had little interest in the outcome, solely because they were so far away.

But wasn’t it still rather awful for the other Four to begin talking behind his back, sneaking into Wilson’s study without him in the least surreptitious way? Meeting up everyday and becoming the actual Supreme Council themselves, they left the island and his representatives with little more to do but nod their heads and click their pens. It’s not too bad, he supposed. It’s natural; I didn’t do that much in the war, he supposed.

Then he heard Clemenceau speaking on the other side of the table in French. “To think that there are blonde women in the world,” he joked, not even in a whisper. “And we stay closed up here with these Japanese, who are so ugly.”

Japan broke his pen in irritation.

 

二。

Light was slanting through the window, stabbing the image of the stars onto the lacquer table tops of the Hôtel Majestic. Two figures could be heard shuffling through the entertainment room, which must have been otherwise empty. The clock read 3 A. M., and inside, Japan could hear America snicker.

Japan pressed his back harder against the column adjacent to the room’s closed door; his fingers grabbed around but found only marble. He knew that on the other side of the stone, America and England were playing billiards in the dark. 

America laughed. England protested. America said something, and England managed to chuckle too.

Tonight, Japan had learned to curb his grudge and show some pity for France and Italy. By this time, he thought it was so apparent that it would be England and America taking home the crown of the peace, for they found each other in Paris, and how could anyone else have reaped more?

You could tell that they’ve only grown onto each other more, he sighed to himself, rubbing his own sternum gingerly.

He pitied himself too. It was a beautiful sight, really: America and England and the Americans and the Brits leaning over to whisper each others’ ears, passing papers amongst each other so quickly that the documents fanned out like dove wings. Wilson and Lloyd George sharing hugs. Shining blue eyes matching shining green. Both were embalmed by their idea of a better future, saved by geography from the anxieties of France (who didn’t care if they whispered or not, for he had stopped talking).

“This is the love they share,” Japan muttered lowly. “England said once that I understood him, so he wanted my soul. But we all know that America is the only one who’s really like him, and the only one who can join him at the top of the world.”

He hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t fear their happiness. But he had not known then that their happiness might become his coldness. He slipped the ring off his finger, and kept touching his heart.

“I was just so lonely,” Japan confessed to the golden band. “Before 1853, in the Edo period, it was calm, and I was happy, but I was unbearably lonely. I wanted to make something out of myself. Maybe I was even naive enough to dream of a foreign romance. I didn’t want to be hurt, the way China was! So I looked the other way.”

“What am I doing wrong? I still feel so alone.” He knocked his head back against the marble, hard enough to make a sound.

He hoped that one of them would hear him, but it was logistically impossible, so they didn’t. He kissed the ring, and dropped it to the floor. 

Finally, he departed, leaving the two to their own concerns as he closed the creaking hallway door.

 

三。

“This is the part where we talk about the politics of it,” Japan interludes. “The poor peace conference. We were all tearing it apart.”

Funny how the predicament of an impersonal assembly could have so much in common with his own history. Arguably the greatest weakness of the Paris Peace Conference was that it was torn between two worlds: the new and the old. While Japan had to choose between East Asia or the ascendant Occident, the conference found itself torn between the imperialistic agreements made before the war and the longing for a new, anti-imperialist order in the war’s aftermath.

Take Italy for example. Italy wanted parts of Austria and Yugoslavia, and who could blame those two brothers, Japan thought. They had gambled their youth for it, and had they not been promised the land, they might not even have agreed to enter the damned conflict in the first place. But if America and England and France let Italy take these parts of Austria and Yugoslavia, wouldn’t they be just setting up a future war, another Alsace-Lorraine? Would that lead only to more hatred and bloodshed in a world that could not bear to take it?

America and England understood that nations had to change before wars did. France wondered if wars were just human nature. Japan, along with those three others, watched in awe as the Italies, infuriated and betrayed, eventually took the train out of Paris, swearing refusal to sign the treaty.

Orlando, the Italian Prime Minister, had been crying before his departure. Veneziano wiped the tears off his jaw with a handkerchief, while Romano whispered to England, “Can you really just let Orlando leave?”

“Of course not,” England said. “We’ll try to break some new deal, but it’s not like it’ll change our fundamental stances.” He shot a look at Wilsons’ study, America’s silhouette apparent through the window. “To complicate things, America might not even want to try anymore, since Wilson can’t stand your delegation.”

“Self-determination and anti-imperialism are upheld only when it’s convenient for you, Bonnefoy, and him,” Romano scoffed. “But whatever, there’s no point in arguing right now. It’s not like Italy doesn’t want to stay, and we should, shouldn’t we? Once the Germans catch whiff of Allied disorganization and think they can push just a little, we’re all fucked.”

England gave the other nation a tired smile. “We’re not all fucked yet. Just almost.” Eventually Orlando does return, but the shatters in the conference never disappear.

Italy had come cradling the old regime in their hands; maybe that was all they had left. Japan, on the other hand, had only two requests for this conference, and he had brought one from each era. 

From the new world Japan brought something that the League of Nations needed, truly. What was the point of international communication if some voices were never taken seriously? So he proposed a Racial Equality Clause, a vow of equal regard in spite of ethnicity, and he wanted it written in the very convent of the League.

From the old world, he brought Shantung, and demanded that the other Allies let him eat it, as Germany had done in the past. “It’s a simple reasoning,” Japan would say. “I was your loyal ally; should I not be rewarded?”

The truth was that Japan was painfully aware of his own weakness, when it came to his relations with the outside world. As America had noted, he was not self-sufficient enough to retreat into isolationism, even if he wanted to. What if one day, the other nations cut off his foreign trade, attempting to guide him under submission? He could not have that, so he needed either an assurance that they trusted him, or he needed to rule more land.

Funny enough, he had actually suggested a clause for both racial and religious equality, and while many were greatly reluctant on the religious aspect, most agreed that a vow of racial equality would be a good thing for the League. But not everybody. 

America shot an uncomfortable look at Wilson. “It’s not like anyone will silence non Anglo-Saxons from speaking or anything, or prevent their delegates entry. We wouldn’t need to write it in, per se, since it’s already assumed.”

“But why not?” France snorted, his voice still sounding scratchy. “The Racial Equality Proposal would be a great testament to the principles of this new order, and it’ll lend faith to the League.”

“What you do think, Arthur?” Japan asked, tapping his fingers on the desk absentmindedly. England looked down at the other’s hands, and sighed.

“...No comment.” The empire looked at Lloyd George, who was also looking to Wilson. France grinned in a rare instance, evidently satisfied to see America and England sulk.

“Let us share your burden,” Japan addressed, standing up slowly. “You already know my history, you already know what I and surely several other nations of color are willing to do for the sake of enlightenment, so please allow us to help you.”

He rubbed the band of his ring finger once last time, reminding himself of the absence of the metal that once lay there. Should he go fetch his ring back?

This shyness that had just opened up inside Japan was a sign of the hope he didn’t realize he’d been storing. For the last sixty years he had wanted to be by their side, on their level, in the Occident, and in fact he had killed himself to get there. He had bore the humiliation and the double standards and he had kept on praying because he believed what he asked for wasn’t much.

And he would keep praying; he would keep chasing them and accept it if they said he still hadn’t run far enough. He would keep trying and trying until they looked at their blueprint then at him and told him that he hadn’t carved himself just right, not yet. He really would.

But the hole in his chest had begun getting bigger and bigger. And China was getting farther and farther. The little injuries he had once ignored because “I understand; I’m not modern enough yet to be their equal” began to aggravate him as he worried, “when will I be modern enough? Aren’t I already better off economically than half of Europe? Isn’t my navy now one of the greatest in the world?”

One day, at China’s house, he threw up everything he’d binged on in the morning. China’s eyes had widened in horror as Japan repeatedly gagged into the toilet, but still the old nation, now ruled by the Guomingdong, kept his silence. After that, Japan stopped coming in the morning.

He didn’t think he could take it anymore. England was gone, and he had no one to reassure him that he was still getting there. He had no more marker of progress, and it was driving him mad.

Was the Racial Equality Proposal his lifeline? Perhaps not purely Japan’s, for his military staff was cheering, “Shantung! Shantung!” But it was Honda Kiku’s, and he held it out, waiting…

“Let’s get back to this at a later date,” America replied.

“I understand,” Japan said, sitting down. Pulling back and letting go.

 

“It’s not personal, Kiku,” America told him, over the last cup of coffee he would have with Japan for a long time.

The beauty of Montmartre and the pure white dome of the Sacre-Coeur cathedral loomed over them. It was windy and the buildings were peaceful up in this high point of Paris, and it was a place of interesting symbolism too: right at the foot of this “mountain of martyrs”, one could find the red light district and the raunchy Moulin Rouge. Japan tells his generals that you can pretend you’re climbing from worldly sin to God, and that keeps your aching feet going.

Night was approaching, and the sky was turning orange. Behind them, a young man from a happier world sang to his wife:

“ _Les escaliers de la butte sont durs aux miséreux, les ailes du Moulin protègent les amoureux…_ ”

“I know. After all this time, how could it be something that I did? It was the color of my skin the whole time,” Japan replied bitterly.

America let out an exhale of breath, and he squeezed the other nation’s hand. Japan didn’t pull back, he just continued to stare at America, anger burning him up inside.

He thought that he had already climbed up the sky. How heartbreaking it was, to learn that he had never ascended at all.

America tapped his foot against the stone ground. “Wilson needs Southern Democrat votes if he wants to pass the League of Nations in Congress. You know how racial relations are in my South. They’ll throw the whole League out if we write it on paper that all races are equal. So if we want it to work at all, it’s just something that has to be unsaid.”

“I also understand that your West Coast doesn’t take a liking to me either,” Japan said softly.

“Yeah. You know when Germany invited Mexico to join the Central Powers? They also told Mexico to try to get you to join too, since you were selling weapons to South America.”

“And as you mentioned,” America confessed, pressing Japan’s palm harder. “The color of your skin doesn’t help. It’s not an issue I can push hard with my people.” America looked down. “Not even the Japanese will say that they’re equal to every race in the world, right?”

“Right, these are our times,” Japan muttered. “I get it then. I shouldn’t have even tried.”

“People will understand one day, Kiku,” America promised, because he was the kind who lived off of hope. “Your people and mine and the rest of the world will all someday regard each other as on equal ground, by the fair grace of God.”

Japan couldn’t be. 

“No, they won’t,” he said curtly, feeling wrung apart.

 

It was a bit nostalgic, that Japan was searching for England again, with his one last plea. Hadn’t it been like this too, when Japan was looking for someone to support his emperor in the 1850s?

Though this time, England, who he found in the tomb of Napoleon, looked exhausted and absolutely not like he was on the top of the world. Funny, Japan thought, how human they became when Japan got to know them. Sometimes they seemed to be just as lost as Japan was.

“Do you want me to apologize?” was the first thing that comes out of England mouth, when his eyes met Japan’s through the dim electric lights.

Yes, Japan wanted to affirm, but instead he just said, “Does that mean you can’t support my proposal?”

England almost seemed a little hurt. “I can’t.”

“Who are you leaving me for this time?” Japan asked sharply.

“My own bloody family,” England snapped back. “Did you come here for answers, or did you just come to satisfy yourself by berating me? Do you even care to know the truth? Because in all honesty I’ve been giving it my all to hold things together and sort out some kind of compromise, but it’s my colonial delegates that can’t tolerate your Racial Equality!”

England hit his fist against the stone wall. “Australia and New Zealand, in particular, won’t have it. Your navy and your immigrants are too close to them, and their representatives aren’t going to support it.”

“Poor Britain,” Japan mocked. “So righteous but the great empire he’s built keeps ruining him!”

England shot him a frustrated look. “Fuck off. So you are just here to yell at me.”

The way his bushy eyebrows were twitching were almost cute, and Japan laughed quietly. “Yes. I know there’s nothing you can do about it, but it’s therapeutic for me.”

“Brat,” England huffed, looking at Japan’s gloveless hand again. “I suppose our alliance isn’t going to last much longer after this.”

“I am genuinely sorry about that,” Japan murmured. “Our Anglo-Japanese Alliance made me so happy. I loved every moment I was by your side. I still remember whenever you dragged me through the parliament halls, pushing people aside and telling them to make way for your dear ally.”

England rubbed his cheek. “I see.”

Japan lowered his head. “For so long I deluded myself into thinking that one day I could attain you and America. I thought, if I can just get there, everything that’s happened until then will be worth it. Everything that I’ve lost, everything my mothers and fathers have lost, everything that I’ve taken from China and Korea and Taiwan and…”

He couldn’t finish, afraid he would begin to choke up. Then, England stepped forward, drawing him into a hug, his arms tightening around Japan’s shoulders.

“You grew up too fast,” England whispered. “That’s all the advice I have for you. And if it helps, I’m so sorry too.”

By the time the clock struck midnight, it was not Japan, but England, who covered his eyes and cried. So Japan rubbed circles into the back of this other island, who like him, grew up so lonely.

 

四。

“ 家はどこですか。” he wrote on the board, telling Taiwan and Korea to copy it down.

“You were right,” he said to Korea. “They will never accept me.”

Korea looked up at him, then to Taiwan, who only shrugged. “We’ve already done those vocabulary,” Taiwan said. “And we did it like, last year.”

“I don’t care,” Japan said. “Please write them again.”

He thought again of that night when China had told him about the greatest cruelty of the moon. Convinced that he and China had been the brilliant sun, and unable to deal with China’s absence, he spent so long searching for a successor, so long searching for the light that would follow China. But the moon never came, and he was always by himself.

His own flags, embroidered with a radiant red disk. The _nichi_ 日 of _Nihon_ 日本. Forget China. If the sun, the only god in the sky during daylight, spent its glory in solitude, then so must he. And the moon, something he had been in love with for so long, yet seeking to own his realm after his fall, had to be his enemy.

“Loneliness may be my divine burden,” he breathed, not even bothering to check their script.

“That’s extremely dramatic of you, Kiku,” Taiwan snorted. “We’re here, aren’t we? You just choose to not spend time with us. Like the time we invited you to eat tonkatsu with us last week and you said ‘Sorry’.”

Japan frowned. “You both used to live with China, and nowadays, I feel bad just looking at you.”

“Because you conquered us,” Korea said, dryly. “It didn’t have to be like this, but you pushed us away yourself.”

“Maybe,” Japan said, flinching at their words but not willing to show it. “I conquered you because I had to protect myself.”

Korea rolled his eyes. “Birdbrain. The resources of an island and a peninsula won’t save your life. Neither will shoving our peoples and cultures to the curbside.”

“Come back then,” Taiwan said, her eyes lighting up. “Stop this nonsense and come back to us.”

But Japan ignored them. It’s too late now, he convinced himself. But maybe some part of him already knew it wasn’t the truth, because he didn’t dare to tell Korea and Taiwan that that was how he felt.

“If they won’t let me rely on them, then I have to become powerful enough to live on my own, don’t you think?” he mused. Taiwan looked at him warily.

Japan touched his own cheek. “Whether I want to be their friend or not, it just can’t be. I can’t fight history. But there’s something the Allies need from me: they need me to sign the Treaty of Versailles, and after Italy already left once, they can’t take another deflection. If they want to keep me in Paris, they’ll have to concede me something. And if I be understanding by letting the Racial Equality Proposal die without much trouble, then they’ll feel obligated to at least give me Shantung.”

Suddenly, Korea stood up and threw at Japan the still boiling contents of a teapot. Taiwan yelped as it burned his lap and his legs, steam and pain beginning to roll off of Japan. 

“If you’re thinking about annexing all of Asia,” Korea smiled, “then good fucking luck.” He grabbed Taiwan by her sleeve, and they both walked out.

 

He didn’t mind the heat, he thought. He needed it hot anyway; he needed it hotter and hotter to fill the void and wash out the coldness of the night sky.

On the day set to decide the Racial Equality Proposal, Japanese representatives Makino and Chinda spoke earnestly over their clause. Venizelos, the charismatic Greek Prime Minister, Orlando, Wellington Gu from China, the French, and the Czech Prime Minister all expressed their favor towards its passage.

Then, Cecil from the British Empire stood up, looking tired, and somberly told the world that his delegation said no.

“It really might alienate my Congressmen,” America agreed, after Wilson’s advisor, House, slipped him a note.

“May we vote?” Makino asked.

Not a single nation dared to vote no, though several, including the United States and the British Empire, abstained.

Wilson overturned it anyway, in an essential veto. Japan could hear it now, the angry cries of his people battering against the “so-civilized modern world”, lurching against his once best friend. But their nation knew it was okay. He had a new plan now, a new game with a new set of rules. He didn’t need to be at their side anymore.

The Japanese will say “we understand.” And they will not press Wilson to pass their clause, but they will use its downfall to manipulate the outcome of the conference.

Japan smiles, bows, and takes a seat. Curtains close, and applause.

 

五。

“If Shantung falls to the Japanese,” Wellington Gu, the eloquent Chinese ambassador to Washington argued, “it will be a dagger pointed at the heart of China.”

Sadly, Japan thought, that’s how my generals see it too. 

“There is literally no good reason Japan should get Shantung,” Japan heard China growl in the backroom one day, to America.

“I know.”

“All the Chinese laborers I sent to Europe during the war did more for the Allies than Japan ever did,” China continued, getting even more frustrated.

“I know,” America repeated, twitching. “Everyone knows both those things. But there’s nothing I can do.”

“You could give me Shantung,” China scowled.

“The treaty will in all seriousness tank if we do that. Japan’s already given up a lot, so his possession of Shantung is a _fait accompli_ at this point.” America frowned. “It’s not like I don’t want to help you.”

“I always have,” he went on, tapping China on the forehead.

Japan shook his head. America and his missionaries did always have a soft spot for China, and Wilson, the greatest missionary of them all, did too.

It broke Wilson’s heart (and possibly caused his physical illness) that Japan might absorb this old part of China that was Chinese in nearly every single way and thus belonged to Chinese rule. It crashed every principle of the new world that he and his country compromised everything to create. 

Worst of all, it was the last straw for China. He would turn his back on the West for good, for what good had it ever done him?

“In all fairness,” House said, “Where can Japan go but China, when so much of the white world is closed to the Japanese?”

“I’m not going to babysit him for you,” China muttered in his native language, and Japan snorted.

At the end of the day, Japan had been mistaken. He had said that America and England would come home as the victors. But America had lost too.

Wilson and America let Japan have Shantung with the hopes that the League of Nations, in the future, could protect the Chinese. They just had to get the League of Nations passed, and all would be okay. But even with the support of the Southern Democrats, the League of Nations failed in Congress, and in the 1920s, failed the world.

“I don’t want your crown anymore,” America told England one day, embittered. “You can keep being that global policeman and you can try to rebuild Pax Britannica, because I won’t join you nor succeed you.” America had come out of his isolationism with the wholehearted hope that he could make the world a better place, and he thought that he had failed. Wilson died, imperialists remained, and America wanted to quit the globe's stage again and just go home.

So go home he did, leaving England all by himself on the lonely throne of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Actually a quote from a Yang Liping show booklet 
> 
> Also Clemenceau, Wellington Gu, and House _really_ did say those things.


	4. descent

The new era opened up with the alcoholism of America and France. No, England’s not joking when he says that, Japan thought with an amused expression on his face, observing the Brit’s disapproval as the two other blonds sang Marlene Dietrich on the drawing room's spiral staircase. 

France was dead; the Great War had killed him, and America was so lost, and everyone had died just a little bit, but the world would never run out of human love. That would keep them going for now, as the gasoline to their Ford Model Ts, even if the road ahead was a future only more broken.

“Old man, come join the party!” America cheered, throwing his boater right at the British Empire. England flinched and ducked. The hat and its trailing ribbon were sent spinning right at Japan, who, despite the wine glass in his hand and the burning sensation in his cheeks, was still coherent enough to catch it.

“Sorry, Japan!” England quickly apologized, before turning his head back to scowl at America. “Get off that stage, Alfred, before gravity takes you down first!”

France rubbed his hands together happily. “He can stand on his own legs just fine nowadays. How disappointing that must be for you, Arthur, since you’ve always been waiting to catch him.” England scowled harder.

“Not true,” America corrected, a little slurred. “These days England knows that I’m the only one rich enough to do any saving. Now, what was the next line again?”

Japan rubbed the rim of the boater gently, before tossing it aside. All the time I lost on that Alfred F. Jones, thinking that something beautiful could come out of us. All the time I was blind to the fact that the world’s greatest ocean separated us, like the Milky Way between two far off stars.

Lost in his own dose of ethanol, Japan nearly did not notice that someone had picked the boater up from the floor, and rested it back on his lap. “You dropped this,” they said, in a voice Japan heard so rarely that it nearly made him jump.

He quickly spun his head. “I’m sorry,” he began, blinking as his eyes met Germany’s. An old nation stared at a young one. Before the war, Germany had only been another European to Japan, set on that classic imperial path, a rite of passage for young powers of that continent. And there had been nothing special about him, right?

Sure, his brother had given him good fangs, but no one had ever asked if the new nation even wanted to inherit them in the first place. Was Prussia’s tradition and control, his crosses and his army and his bureaucracy, not just as much a burden as a gift? 

“Fight for your life!” Japan remembered Prussia hissing at his brother in 1914. Then the Germans lost the war, Prussia went under, and Germany, not even half a century old, stood on his own legs under the warning eyes of the rest of West Europe.

People liked to pathologize Germany after the war, and Japan himself wasn’t immune to a good murder-mystery. Indeed, he flipped through the tenets and listened with intrigue as they described how Germany’s democracy was unusual in its marriage with Junker aristocracy, spawning what they saw as a despotism that was all too much Prussia’s endowment.

Talk about nations shaping into their older brothers, Japan mused, thinking of both America and the German now. Or maybe not. It was just a theory, after all.

It wasn’t like Japan wasn’t self-aware. He knew why had hooked on greater interest to this state than he would have with the other empire-stripped Europeans. The island followed Germany knowing that Germany could understand.

Seen as different from the others, shackled by his heritage and forced away from the orthodox fairytale, or nightmare. But whether the road was sweet or bitter was not what mattered; what mattered to Japan was if he would find others on it or not.

Germany had turned away by then, even though Japan kept staring. Is he used to all this ogling? Japan wondered. That’s almost pitiful.

“Excuse me, Germany,” Japan said. “Thank you for retrieving my hat.”

“You’re welcome,” the other replied, somewhat stiffly. He still didn’t seem keen to look at Japan, which was a shame. So much of a shame in fact that Japan, despite used to being the more reserved one in nature, wanted to pull him out of his shell.

He tried again. “Would you like to get a drink with me?”

Germany flickered his eyes in the Easterner’s direction momentarily. “I think sobriety suits a defeated nation tonight.”

“Are you afraid of being obscene?” Japan murmured. “It’s not any more convincing to abstain here then go home and cry into a mug of beer.”

“Those are bold words,” Germany said, and Japan imagined him baring and licking his canines. “Why pick on me out of all the losers?”

That was a loaded question, and probably better targeted at the entire Allied Council of Five instead of just Japan. Had he asked that in Versailles, Japan would have flatly told him, because Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire died.

But now he asked it in London, and they were at a party no less. So Japan just leaned in, saying, “I only find you the most interesting.” And to extrapolate: “Please tell me, do you blame your brother for losing the war?”

Germany blinked, taken aback like that question had never entered his mind before. “No,” he answered, a bit slowly. “I thought out of all scenarios I’d be the one blamed between us. Well, Gilbert hasn’t said anything yet.”

“People do say he’s the militaristic one,” Japan offered.

“Militaristic!” Germany huffed. “That’s the new buzzword everyone throws around these days. My enlightened neighbors… they call my brother and I ‘militaristic’ as they do the same thing. But I am not the one who took the most of Africa. Nor the one producing massive excesses of guns. Nor the one with the world’s largest naval fleet.”

He was so annoyed that his nails dug into his palms as he was speaking. His bitterness struck a chord within Japan, who could have uttered the same thing. Why don’t you trust me? Japan had challenged to the others. Why are my people and my immigrants and my customs and my navy always the guilty ones?

The light of his lantern, illuminating the once empty path he walked upon, at last striking another.

“Did you even want to be your brother?”

“No,” Germany sighed. “But my kaiser did. Wilhelm and I were once young together, and even though he was an outcast with a scarred arm and I was a shy with a scarred birth, we had each other. Then he grew up before I did and wanted to become someone fate would have never let him be.”

“He wanted to be like the Prussian generals,” the nation growled. “Like Caesar and Arminius at once. He fell in love with my brother and wanted to make me just like him, believing that wars and colonies and submarines were the way to do it. I began to miss it horribly when we were only children and he was telling me that you didn’t have to be glorious to make up for being broken.”

Japan looked at his own hands, imagining an awful world in which he’d have been forced to cut his hair before he was ready. “Then you must resent him.”

“No. He was just a victim of the ambitions of those around him. Someone clever thought he was easy to control and steered him onto that track, thinking it would be the best for this country. I guess he proved them fucking wrong by driving the German Empire into a wall.”

The blond rubbed his forehead as Japan gawked a little. “Perhaps the moral of this story is that you shouldn’t manipulate people,” Germany muttered.

The Asian leaned his cheek against his first. “Not all stories have morals.” He shook his head, laughing quietly against his black gloves.

 

The powerful are never lonely, Japan thought, because they can just take who they need.

It was especially easy to convince himself of this as Taiwan swung her legs close by, the two of them perching off the precipice of some cliff.

“We share a lot of ledges between us,” Taiwan pointed out, pointedly. “Us both being islands.’

Whatever her point was, he missed it. These days, Japan found it hard enough to grasp the meaning of her presence in itself. Some part of it felt wrong: shouldn’t I be forcing you to watch the seagulls with me? Why do you just come along? He concluded that she must feel threatened to even if he didn’t explicitly command it.

It was equally befuddling how long her legs became, how much wider her rib cage and collarbones fanned out compared to that little girl who liked to cling onto his waist in the 1850s. It was so confusing how he had come to acquaintance himself with the rest of the geometry of her body, and sometimes she would set her arms against his shoulders like she was his wife, and he would dig his fingers through her thick mocha hair. She would pull off his cape and epaulettes and call him an idiot, and he would pluck the petals out of her hair and ask if she really loved him. She always said yes and she teared up whenever he cradled her head like a dying man.

“I fell in love with you because you’re so stupid,” she told him one day. “Just kidding. Don’t start crying again,” she admonished. “Honestly, I’ve always had a soft spot for you. And love feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s... the only thing that’s worth living for.”

He became so powerful, and he wanted the world to know how much he did it out of love. He tried to make his conquest romantic by giving her all he imagined her to desire. 

What did he know, though? He sometimes couldn’t even remember what he wanted himself. 

 

Red painted nails, red painted lips, red painted lines under the curve of their almond eyes. He hated Karayuki-san: “Ms. Gone Abroad”, a name for the Japanese prostitutes that would go overseas.

Karayuki-san proliferated during these days; was she an emblem of how much nations like him had been forced to sell? As he grew stronger, he tried to snuff her out, snarling that he would never let anyone touch him again, but she refused to disappear. Leaning into his ear, snapping his obi against her knuckles, she reminded him that none, not even the great, could stop from being robbed of themselves. “Power is beauty, and beauty invites plunder,” she said, wearing the face of a teenage girl named Umemura.

Her words struck him. Shutting his eyes, he resurrected the image of a long gone past. 

How far ago had it been when China towered over him, his hands pinching Japan’s shoulders, his emotions concealed by the flickering beads of his 冕? The times of the great, nascent Han Empire, sweeping his robes over Japan as valiant soldiers gutted rebels outside. Rich fabric was fluttering over the young island’s eyes, blocking out all light, protecting and encaging him at once. 

To Japan, powerful China was as beautiful as a butterfly. Is that how I fell in love? he asked himself. Is that how I came to want to pin him to a wall?

 

From under Yoshithito’s sickly grasp, a democratic movement stole the reins of Japan. But then Yoshihito died, and the new still wasn’t ready to weigh against the old.

Frequently, Japan laid flowers on Meiji’s birthplace, a simple well within the confines of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Of course, Yoshihito died and became Taishō, and Japan started to carry even more flowers under his arm.

What would he tell Meiji now, in the 1920s? Hey, Mutsuhito, do you know that I drive a car now? I know you never liked the West that much, even if you wore their medals and sashes. That nation you loved with all of your heart is now on a road he suspects you disapprove of.

Even Taishō, who sung in French and had a much greater affinity for the West, probably wouldn’t be fond of the way Japan was going either. But that was fine; with each generation, something had to give. 

“Come on, Emperor,” Japan said to the young man standing behind him. “Let us go on our own.”

“I really must be alone,” Hirohito sighed. “Otherwise, you would never speak to me so informally.”

His nation offered him a soft smile. “Sorry.” His attention flickered back to the trees and the paved stones. “Say, Your Highness, what kind of flowers would you lay on my grave? Spider lilies, blossoms, chrysanthemums… there are a lot of options.”

The real question was, “do you think you’ll ever bring flowers to my grave?” and Hirohito never gave his opinion on that, making Japan wonder if it was out of the awareness that he didn’t completely rule his country. Wind blew behind their ears, behind the backs of the dead leaves that seemed to fly towards heaven, and Hirohito wiped his glasses, not that the petals wilting before him was anything he wanted to see. 

“Such a lovely country cannot perish.” Japan thought of Rome, and thought of how that was all the Emperor ever brought himself to say— capturing that timeless tragedy of human love and hope into a simple utterance.

 

“Mr. America, you’re in such a bad shape,” Japan grinned, dumping a canister of hot tea until it overflowed past the rim of the other’s cup. “I thought the stock market crash hit you badly enough that you were starving. But I guess it’s all right, if you aren’t even eating.”

“You didn’t escape easily enough to be able to afford to do all of this,” America scoffed, not even reacting to the scald. “Yet you do it anyway, you petty bastard.”

It was true that Japan wasn’t able to preen all the time, even if he had come out relatively unscathed by the Great Depression. In fact, the Depression had damaged his resources quite considerably (something America loved to remind him as he tightened the strings on those metal and oil exports, like a harness reminding Japan that he was misbehaving).

By the early 1930s, their relationship had deteriorated to the point that this was worth it.

Piles upon piles of food, ranging from a dish of sashimi weighing a kilogram on the table, to amalgamations of mass-produced sweets owing their thanks to the Second Industrial Revolution. Not to mention a literal tower of European pies and breads at the center, nor the huge bowl of pork feet that dripped with clear oil. All of this sat upon a dainty desk, stolen right from the earthquake-shambled Rokumeikan, which Japan humored himself with pretending it was struck down by the gods.

Sitting to America’s right, England ate nonchalantly, the rim of a split cherry tart painting a rosy line near his lower lip. 

Sitting to Japan’s left, Korea sunk his teeth into some tuna, slowly. “Which Washington Naval Conference is this?” he asked in a mumble.

“At least France and Italy aren’t here,” England offered, pushing an eclair into Japan’s mouth. Whether he did it to shut the Easterner up or to jab at America somehow, no one could say for sure.

Japan set the pastry down and wiped the cream off his mouth, the clean little imperialist that he was. Then he was taunting the United States again. “Why are you turning it down? Don’t you know it’s good manners to finish your plate? And just a decade ago, you were the king of excess whom we all learned from.”

America clicked his tongue and shot the island an infuriated smile. “You’re doing this to humiliate me, aren’t you? To have me admit that I’m not as good as my word? I don’t mind; I don’t even believe myself anymore.”

Japan watched as the other calmly pinched the end of a rib eye steak, holding it in the air with the tips of his fingers as if it were a corpse. “For one,” America said, “this is nothing compared to the time I swallowed Cuba.”

And because America didn’t like to do things in diffident bounds, he dropped the rib eye on the plate then took a bite out of England’s hand.

More accurately, the out of the jambon-beurre sandwich England held in his hand, parallel to the bend in the Englishman’s wrist. But his teeth almost grazed fingers, and in Japan’s opinion it would’ve been much more entertaining had he actually bit down to old England’s bones.

America ate the rest of the fish at the table, his hands twitching as he brought black chopsticks to his lips and ripped apart everything in front of him. He wouldn’t stop shivering, but his face was still as he continued dining from England’s palm, at some point jerking the Briton closer to facilitate the transfer, and the United Kingdom did not move the whole time, just watching with eyes blown wide open at this mockery of a mother bird feeding her fledglings, yet unable to extract himself from its memory.

At some point America pulled Korea over by the collar of his hanbok, perhaps mistaking the rice cake the Asian held out without attention as a part of England. He nipped Korea by mistake, startling a yelp from the other. The blond flinched too and rubbed Korea’s hand in apology, running over the other’s knuckles before letting go.

England looked so sad to see America like this, who had appeared to be having a hard time recognizing the Brit sitting right before him. Eternal innocence, to grow up by your own word and not be twisted into the monster your forebears were— China’s old wish for Japan all those years ago, now lost on America too.

America seemed dismayed as well; not by the just meal he partook in, but by what it represented in its physiognomic. He seemed sad to just eat, though it occurred to Japan that everybody has to eat, and that America and England had not invented the carnal act of consumption in of itself.

Ah, Japan realized, in that instant, the West did not invent imperialism. It was a revelation too easy to bring anything but sorrow. Indeed they had set the rules of the game, but once upon a time someone had thrown them in too, and since Ptolemy’s world map they all, from Japan to England to Taiwan to Sicily, were just the teeth and skin of the Ouroboros. Forever stuck in this cycle of taking and the taken, not because they wanted to be bad, but because the laws of the universe splitting through oceans from the Adriatic to the Indian demanded it.

America had found that outdated; in fact, he hardly knew what an Ouroboros was. He was born under the pen, a weapon in the arsenal of romantics and idealists, and he had given it his best in Paris to turn that complicated, archaic creature into a stupid, simple snake. A snake that was so simple it had to stay together, the way nations would have to rest in the same room and speak to each other and rewrite the rules of the Earth _together_ , a League of Nations, calling to join, or die in another Great War.

America covered his mouth with both his hands, a sickly pale pallor spreading through his face.

England winced as he noticed. “Excuse me, Japan, where’s the toilet?” Instinctively, he reached over to comfort the American, and the worried look on his face didn’t quite hide his evident fear that America would rebuke him. Maybe America would tell him, “I don’t know you anymore, England” or “aren’t I too gross to touch now, England?”, and that was what Japan would have said. But America let the other’s hand fall on his shoulder, a low thank you escaping from in between his fingers.

In the end it was Japan who led America to the bathroom, offering him a roll of paper just in case he needed to vomit. He didn’t, but he looked sick.

“You’re a hypocrite too,” was the first thing he managed to cough out, upon cooling down a little.

Japan raised an eyebrow at the American. “You call me petty, yet the first words out of your mouth are insults.”

“I need somewhere to confront you, all right?” he snapped.

“Okay, Mr. Equality.”

America rolled his eyes. “As you wish, Mr. I-hate-racism-until-it’s-part-of-ultranationalist-Japanese-policy. You go point the finger at me all you like, and it’s so painfully clear that I’m not perfect, but at this point you don’t even try to make things better. Truth is, you’re en route to go further than I ever have.”

“Because I no longer care about making things ‘better’,” Japan growled. “And I don’t care if you care yourself. We aren’t in a world of holding hands and daisies— save that for another time. You already tried to bring about your dream in 1919. You were failing long before that. Now leave it alone.”

“What? Leave you alone?” America winked back with a sarcastic flirtatiousness usually reserved for snarky dying empires. “Don’t even hope for it, grandpa.” Then he spun on his heel and, contrary to his word, disappeared for the next decade.

 

Seeing this burning, ascendant land of the Far East clutching the arm of a frail girl and tugging her through the maze of paper walls, the corner of Hirohito's mouth couldn’t help but curve into a frown.

“Japan,” he began, slowly, “What are you doing?” Japan, for his part, just blinked at his Emperor, not really sure what the issue was.

Hirohito’s eyes flickered lower, and something in Japan finally clicked. “Oh,” he said, his tongue not really working the way it was supposed to, “I just brought her in for a sandwich.”

“For a sandwich.” Hirohito repeated the imported word cautiously, still looking at the kimono clad teenager who didn’t even break five feet. The prostitute tugged on Japan’s obi unceremoniously, more shy than afraid, before Japan whispered to her that she should take her leave.

“She’s from French Indochina,” Japan explained. “I mean, she was born here. But she works in Indochina.”

“I see. My bad, I wasn’t trying to assume anything.”

“Yet you did.”

The other regarded him regretfully. “Since I don’t know whose side you’re on.”

Japan frowned. “I don’t know what the sides even are.”

“That’s fair enough.” Hirohito closed his eyes. “My bad, again, for being paranoid about your alleg—“

Before the Emperor could even finish his sentence, Japan’s knees buckled and he toppled. “Umemura!” he gasped, and the girl who had been lingering by the door cried out and leapt forward.

She managed to hold his heavy form in her arms, and Hirohito ran over just as quickly, trying to assist her burden. They shook him gently, and after a minute, Japan could’ve stood up on his own once more, but he refused to. It had felt too lovely as his body had moved towards the ground, the thrill of the air blowing against his face blinding him into thinking that he had been flying.

I never want to get up again, he thought with a dreamy look on his face, an expression he dared not to show even when he took hot baths and ate candy. Both the young man and the young woman besides him knew this, and it concerned them to see him in such delight.

“The Kwantung Army has just invaded Manchuria,” Japan then uttered, recognizing the beat in his ears as blood, yet not his own.

Hirohito stared at the decorative sword by his side like it was going to change shape. “Yet I never signed off such an order.”

Japan smiled. “They were always a little independent.”

“I have to wonder how little my permittance means to them,” the Emperor chuckled. “Is this terrible?”

Two days later, he was brought a severed arm. Japan pinched his jugular, kneeling before the throne, as Hirohito sat a few feet behind. He was faced towards and could see the rows of his officers stretching out to the back of hall, in cloudy uniforms with silver guns by their side, going to infinity like a railroad.

They bowed to the nation and the king, both of them divine.

“It’s true, that there was an order to localize the turmoil. But the Kwantung Army knew that Manchuria was the country’s lifeline.”

Is it, Japan wondered. I always recalled it being a dry place, difficult for farmers.

They begged him to take the arm, its sliced end red and bursting. It reminded Japan of a twisted version of England pleading for America to join his side, if not as his son then as his successor.

But did you hear what they said, some voice whispered. Was it Umemura, or that echo that had haunted his dreams in the 1900s? They just want to save your life, it said.

The look on Hirohito’s face almost gave the impression that he would not permit Japan to take this bloody crown. That made sense: Hirohito’s real dream was to be a biologist, so Japan supposed he was too biased towards life.

But the empire accepted it; after all, his Emperor did stay silent in the end. He welcomed it and held the limb like a child, sticking one of its finger past his teeth. China, he thought with a grin.

It’s just a taste, Japan. If you like it, they will bring seconds. 

Rows and rows of men, young like Hirohito. Cloudy uniforms and silver guns by their sides. Their love, so fervent, that they gambled away lives not theirs to give.

 

Somewhere further off, under a much less glorious light, locked between stone walls that hid the shine of bombardments from their wary eyes, two old nations played mahjong and swatted crane flies.

“I win. Now I get to cut your hair, right?”

“Don’t you dare,” China huffed, slapping the other’s hand away.

The Soviet Union frowned. “Even if you won’t let me cut it, Japan will do it anyway. Who do you trust gives better haircuts? The prole or the bureaucrat?”

“You’re neither of those things. I’m serious, I like my hair.”

“I’m just going to shear your other side, even if you push me away. Such are the disadvantages of having one arm.”

“I know,” China replied, dryly. “Are you giving me this shit because I made fun of your nose once?”

Russia laughed. “Eureka. And you did it during my formative years. How cruel.”

“Really? Because I recall saying it only yesterday.”

“These days are my most formative, China,” Russia grinned. “And they could be yours too. Think of it: the grandeur that modernization brings! Industry, cities, the ability to defend your own people… and all you have to do is let me cut your hair.”

“No thank you, Conman.” 

Russia turned away, almost teary. “What?” China protested. “That really is what every conman says. And the greatest conmen of all time were those Europeans on their charcoal vessels. How do I know you’ll be any better?”

The Soviet’s boots tapped against the ground impatiently. “Because I’m not a West European? Because you really don’t have a choice, except between me and them? Let me help you or watch another one of your attempts at a republic die.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” China replied. “Dear Soyuz, I’m not willing to invest myself in yet another foolish outsider.”

But Russia kept grinning, almost mischievously, setting a hand over his heart. “I will save you, China.”

To that China broke out laughing, laughing so hard that he grabbed the table, and all the while Russia cleared the pieces off the board in between them. “You’re going to save me? From who, yourself? You sound so much like the others that you should be ashamed!”

“I’m going to show you that you’re going to have to learn from someone else for once!” Russia insisted with a fervor. “You love to be on your own, don’t you? You don’t think anyone could ever be as right, or as important. But trust me for once, and I’ll show you how to write your own future. I’ll give you a reason to have faith in me, to orbit me.”

China’s mouth twitched up into an irritated smile. “And why you? Why you out of all the Earth?” Why do you think you’ll be the one to break fate, when I have been trying for millennia?

“Hm,” Russia said. “I can’t answer that unless you agree first.”

Watching his tall figure, draped in dark winter wool, tilt his head like he was clueless, China could admit that the Soviet Union endeared him. 

And China did not know it yet, but half of Ivan’s appeal was that his regime was young and naive. Like a child reaching out with a full heart, completely unconcerned with all that he could lose.

For Russia, it was because he thought he had already lost it all. Let Lenin and Stalin cast a famine over him, strip the flesh right from in between his skin and bones, if it meant that this starvation could be his last. But China did not think of this. He dreamt of the child who did not care because he had never yet lost anything. In that moment, all this Middle Kingdom thought of were the falling flowers in Tokyo. A little boy with dazed eyes pulling a traditional Shinto robe over his shoulder, gathering corollas in his hands and pollen under his nails. Laying his head in an old man’s lap, apologizing for destroying the Empress’s new cloak. 

China reached out and grabbed onto Russia’s forearm. “Do whatever you want.”

Just stay innocent, will you?

 

Japan came back for a second, then a third, in 1937. 

In this war of destruction, Japan did not care. The sun rose even over the dead, so Japan had to become a monster, or a God.

When he finally captured China, the other was humming, despite being nearly buried alive under heavy kimono cloth. Japan asked what was so amusing and China told him, cheerfully, that every day the sun must fall.

America would not forgive him for this war, this war to truly conquer the far Orient, not that Japan expected him to. It was, after all, such a large waste of resources and time. Nonetheless, America cited a different reason over the phone.

“We were once best friends, weren’t we?” he asked with the same kind of amazement he had shown nearly half a century ago, when Japan had first shown him how to write his name, 亜米利加, in kanji. “Kiku, I’m going to run you down into the ground then bring you all the way back home.”

Japan hung up then before pacing around the room in anger. Was destruction really a form of mercy?

Nearby, Hirohito stood and watched as his nation grabbed his own hair in a fistful, growling, “You couldn’t even save England!”

 

“The atmosphere here is awful.” Korea looked over his shoulder, to the man sitting behind him. “Nice haircut, by the way.”

“Thank you,” China snorted. “The sadness in this room… it must be because Taiwan isn’t talking.”

“Or it could be the fact that you lost your arm, Old Man,” Taiwan muttered, the first words she had spoken that day. “And he lost his mind.”

Japan looked up from the French divan he’d been lying on for the past hour, eyes fixed unto the empty blackboard. “Lost my mind? Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” he mocked, and propped himself up with his guntō.

Taiwan scowled. “Don’t give me that attitude, Mister, not when you’re using my troops in the war. I’ve got to have a heart of gold not to fight back harder.”

He offered her an unwavering smile. “My apologies. I’m being a bad teacher today, aren’t I?”

“I didn’t know one learned things in this room,” China retorted. “All the blood stains on the furniture and walls would make you think that people get tortured here.”

Japan shot him a halfhearted look. “Multifunctional is the way to go.”

China shook his head. “You’re so cruel, Kiku. What for? What are you even trying to ‘teach’ us, at the end of the day?”

“He abandoned us at first to please them,” Korea said. “Then they threw him out so now he doesn’t care about anything anymore.” Taiwan let out an exhausted moan, so weary that it tore itself from her throat.

“Because you never loved me _enough_ at first,” Japan hissed. “Couldn’t protect yourself for me. Left me behind and blinded me.”

China stood up, pushing his seat back, his empty sleeve dangling besides him. “That’s directed at me, isn’t it? Deity blame me for not being able to give you everything!”

Japan tore at his own gloves. “Yes, may the Gods blame you! And now here I am, unable to protect my own self, crushing you under my feet, doing so much worse than anything you’ve done to me. Because when I boil it down,” he gasped, “You’ve done nothing to me. I’ve never had anything done to me. But I wanted so much more than nothing out of this world. Even you conquered your neighbors and kissed Rome and lived such great journeys!”

The continental nation scratched his nails against the bloodstains on the desk. “But you’re going too far! Are you too inexperienced to realize that nations often pay for their atrocities?”

“I took out a loan. Ends justify their means.”

“Honda Kiku, you never had nothing,” Taiwan said, quietly. “You’ve always had us. You could have gone out there and spun your stories without all of this mess and glory.”

Japan’s expression jerked into an ugly grimace. Korea rubbed his face. “But you would have been weak, right? Weak like me.”

“Hurt or be hurt,” Japan said. “The Europeans knew that very well.”

China closed his eyes. “And they are very hurt, still.”

“Come and kiss me,” Japan growled, “If you think you ever loved me enough to satisfy me.”

Three sets of eyes all gazed warily upon the Rising Sun. “Really?” Korea wondered, but none of them rebuked him, and China was the first to step up. Japan looked down so that all he was able to see was that grotesque floor, and he had to hear China’s feet to reassure that the other was coming. 

A warm hand cupped Japan’s face, from his jaw to his cheek. “You won’t be satisfied,” he said lowly. “That’s your problem, not mine. But I have always loved you more than I could bear.”

His wrist shifted, and he moved his mouth over Japan’s. The island froze. For a moment it was too lovely too move. He could not call it warm nor cool nor any sort of temperature that he could crank too high. It was only the austere, tactile feeling of lip against lip.

He threw his trembling arms around China’s neck, pulling the other into a deeper kiss. Dark sleeves wrinkled themselves against a bare nape. He wished that it could last forever, but neither of them had ever had any luck in fighting against time.

As he finally pulled back, Taiwan walked forward. She pinched his ear gently, before leaning to him. He prepared himself to recall the citrus taste of her mouth, but she tiptoed, going higher, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. When she moved away, it was almost phantom like.

“Ugh,” Korea sighed, but then he surprised Japan by pulling the other into a tight embrace. The peninsula pressed his knuckles against his mouth, before moving them to gently graze Japan’s brow. “You’ll come out of this stronger, Honda.”

Will I, he wondered as he watched Korea back off. Unable to halt him and apologize even if he wanted to.

He imagined himself forcing them to stay, but his heart came up empty. No, it couldn’t have, that was way things were supposed to be.

Damn it all, why hadn’t he locked the door? he wondered as despair enclosed him.

 

Roses fell and curled against the floors the day the Reichstag burned. Adolf Hitler told Germany to burn himself when there was no fuel left, and like this, the Third Reich chewed up and devoured its own people, Cronus of a sort, sons and daughters vanishing behind a smokescreen. Imperfect love exchanged for the perfection of hatred.

But it wasn’t an art. It wasn’t even beautiful. It wasn’t like the pretty moon that waxed and waned and guided the lost in the night.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Germany said. “Gilbert may have spited me from birth, but he should have cursed me more, for I will kill him.”

He shrugged. “We exist at each other’s odds; the Kingdom of Prussia is like Rome, you know. It is a state with a heart of principle, not ethnicity. But if I, _Deutsch_ land, a country built primarily on the idea of a common people, exist between the same borders, then my soul is bound to contradict his. We both chose what we sacrificed, and whoever beats the other in the race lives, while the other is murdered as was Abel.”

Germany tapped his foot against the ground. “He teases me, saying that he’s older so he must be Cain, and my keeper. But unlike what Cain, Gilbert will give up his hegemony for me.”

Finally, his face crumpled into some hurt expression. “He forfeited his dominance over our shared people long before the Fuhrer took power. He was orchestrating his own funeral procession the minute he decided he wanted to create a ‘Germany’. Like this, he destined me to to kill my very own brother.”

“Is that irresponsible of him?” Japan muttered. “He was never looking for a fight, wasn’t he?”

At last, Germany bore those canines that Japan had longed to see. “No. He brought me to life knowing it would kill him. In this battle, he cedes. He dies for me.”

A strangled sound nearly escaped from Japan’s throat. So here was invincible Prussia, relinquishing the grandeur of all his beloved kings for a little boy.

Japan knew how to climb, how to kill for love. But he had forgotten what it was like to die for it. And he never thought of becoming the Amaterasu who let himself be fragile and fall, descending of his volition so that the children of the world could glimpse a new lunar rise.

A different journey, an alternative romance, in which crawling through the filth was more noble than standing. In his head, China smiled dreamily, America laughed, and Japan cracked.

Rubbing his throat, the island shot a weak smile Germany’s way. “I think you just killed me too,” he said. It was hard to elaborate.

 

In 1937, the European theater prepared for opening night. Japan sat with Germany and Italy and found it so wonderful, to have those two to rely on, amid the rolling tanks and broken bottles of cherry perfume that the 1940s would be sure to bring.

He assumed that, with them, he had finally attained the hearth that he had sought. They threw confetti his way and shuttled him around in fancy Italian cars (that Ludwig had picked out), recognizing him for what he was truly worth; Germany even went through the trouble of making him an ‘honorary Aryan’, for heaven’s sake, the exact opposite of what he had received in Paris.

Italy had just kicked the football Japan’s way, the moment Germany somewhat obtusely showed up with the set of engagement rings he had gotten the three of them. It had been hilarious, to watch that tan face pale like a sheet when he saw the diamonds in the German’s hands.

“For posterity,” he explained.

“You’re kind of an idiot, Ludwig,” Vargas huffed.

“What, coming from you?” Ludwig choked. Japan laughed at the both of them, rolling his foot over the ball.

He played so carelessly then, so blind to how each of them would only further burden the sins of the two others. He did know it yet, but the only fate for happiness woven with this much blood was decay and rot.

The last ‘enemy’ call Japan made in these ‘before times’ was to the United Kingdom, who would admittedly always hold some strange place in his heart. It was embarrassing, Japan felt, but the alliance really had been one of the greatest love stories of his life. If we could only have stayed like that forever, then how colorful the world would be.

“Hello, Arthur,” he greeted. “I hope you aren’t too busy today.”

Japan still remembered how often Kirkland would rub his eyes in the morning, tired and still swallowing loud yawns. “Kiku? Oh no, it is a Sunday after all. Is there something you need from me?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Can you tell me about the past, when America was young and weak?”

The voice turned more wary. “Why? I hope you aren’t trying to get off on that.”

“Arthur,” Japan complained. “I just want to hear about how much you loved something you’ve now lost. You have a lot in common with China, after all.”’

I just want to hear about how much you loved someone so helpless and naive, the Easterner pleaded.

“I see. I… don’t know, there’s too much to say. America was always certainly a brat, but he was there, you know? I would come home and he would always be there, and maybe I loved children unconditionally because they were the first to love me unconditionally. He’d let me pick him up and throw daffodils at my hair and every night nagged me to sing him Greensleeves. How silly to say this… but no one has asked any of that of me since.”

His tone softened. “It’s not too different from what he sees in me. Toy soldiers and lullabies. Innumerable small things.”

“Thank you.” Japan felt the tips of his fingers pulse with blood as he set them on the receiver. “We’re both quite sad then, aren’t we?”

England laughed. “We are. How have you been, Kiku?”

And Japan couldn’t help but let a nostalgic smile slip its way back onto his countenance. “Unlike you, I’ve been very busy. Did you know that this month I folded over a thousand paper cranes?” 

For you and America. For China and I. For Germany and Prussia, perhaps even America and Canada, perhaps even the Italies.

For the fratricide of Remus, to hail a kingdom born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of this chapter is a pun on falling things and ancestry. get it? huehehue
> 
> schools starting soon so the next update might take a while :I


	5. night light

America spun the kiseru in his hand lazily, the only thing he’d been smoking from recently. He’d gotten well sick of the corncob looking pipes General MacArthur kept sending him from God knows where he procured them in the Philippines. On the other hand, the other ones that his reelected president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, used felt frankly too nouveau.

“There’s nothing wrong here,” Roosevelt commented, like he could read his nation’s mind as eyes narrowed at the apparatus in his hand. “It’s just your everyday pipe, Alfred.”

“Everyday isn’t a concept for someone as old as me,” America replied dismissively. “I mean, I get you’re old, Old Man. You’re like in your fifties now and you’ll probably start losing hair soon. But you aren’t _ancient_.”

“Ancient,” Roosevelt repeated, though without the sulkiness his nation said it with. “Hm. Do economic depressions usually make you emotionally depressed as well?”

America’s eye twitched. “I’m not emotionally depressed. I’m never emotionally depressed.” The kiseru slipped out of his hand and knocked against the tip of his shoe, rolling onto its side. A series of kanji with no concern for stroke order was exposed: 亜米利加. He huffed.

“You are,” the president commented cheerfully.

America crossed his arms. “All these accusations. Next time you give a speech, I’m going to park your wheelchair on top of a hill. And leave the wheels facing straight.”

Roosevelt chuckled. “It’s okay if you’re down Alfred. It’s not okay if my wheelchair is. In all seriousness. You should probably talk about it. No one knows if your feelings are just your feelings or not, after all.”

“The art of governing and the art of therapy are very closely intertwined, I see,” America sighed. “I don’t know. FDR, what if I’ve lost my faith?”

Roosevelt cocked his head. “In yourself?”

“Yes,” America affirmed, almost desperately. “I used to believe in my destiny. I used to believe that I could use my power to change the world for the better. I was born on a dream and I thought that meant that I could be different than the others… but what good has happened? War still exists, and Hitler’s up there making a fool of the League.”

“I thought that if I went out, accrued strength, I could put it towards something free and beautiful.” He paused, scowling and stomping on the kiseru bitterly. “But I should never have even tried. Maybe then I wouldn’t have left all these scars. I should have just ran with California and fucking settled.”

“Yet you didn’t. You didn’t settle. You went out there and you left those scars and you hurt those people and you can never take it back.” The president closed his eyes. “So, are you going to give up?”

America set his glasses on the table, and rubbed his cheek. “I already have, haven’t I? I didn’t join the League.”

“And that’s exactly why fascists make a fool of it,” Roosevelt rebutted, surprising America with the scorn in his tone. “Alfred. Hitler didn’t rise because you tried too hard. Hitler rose because you didn’t try hard enough.”

America shook his head. “Don’t be naive.”

“I’m afraid I can’t be called the naive one, when I’m sitting right across from the most powerful nation in the world who thinks he can dodge his responsibility once more. Because that’s what isolationism is: cowardice. Not when I’m sitting right across from this young man who tells me how sorry he is to have hurt and failed but doesn’t seem to realize that he can still apologize, that he can still make amends by turning on his heel and promising to do it right this time.”

Alfred looked up. “It’s not your dream’s fault that it flopped,” Roosevelt continued, his voice rising slightly. “You know where you went wrong now, and I happen to believe in your dream too. So why don’t we try one more time what Wilson tried, and end war? But this time, you don’t give up halfway. You never do.”

 

“Am I supposed to die for this?” Japan asked.

Here in 1938, Nanjing, he stood atop the ongoing massacre. When he walked through shops that lined the streets and tapped his knuckles against the oxcarts turned over, no one replied. But it wasn’t an empty city by any means; no, it was much too full, bodies refusing to hide themselves, not until the legs of his pants grew splattered with fingerprints and palms and the bottom of his shoes grew dyed with red. Filled to the brim with ghosts and the dead, the city could hardly be called asleep.

He had waited out most of the slaughter of a certain Sunday inside a narrow alleyway, fishing China out of the crowd and forcing the other nation to stay besides him. He didn’t want himself— nor China —to watch his troops monkey around with human remnants. Behind the crumbling walls of this Chinese city, he became disgusted by the sheer lack of restraint or, dare he entertain, fraternal sentiment that did not manifest during the rape and murder. Thinking she could relate, with her body frequented by the wandering hands of those who never imagined that she was a daughter, he had confided to Umemura how wretched he found his soldiers’ behavior. But all she told him was, “In fairness, you and the Emperor are the ones who tell us that the Chinese, the Koreans, and so forth aren’t _that_ kind of human.”

Yes. This was so wrong, wasn’t it? It was his sin. He should have held back, done something… anything. He should have given China, looking bony with his legs covered in sores, any sort of break.

This is what you’ve established, he thought to himself. You love China, and China loves you. Then die for him.

As dusk neared, Japan lowered his sword from the taller nation’s neck, and stared at it. Dissociation between his inaction and the mistake he knew he was committing rocked his head with an ache. Meanwhile China, sensing the opportunity, broke free of the alley, running out onto the main street. Japan watched him, at first confounded, and only understanding with a chill when the other threw himself onto the floor, over the body of a dead boy.

“I’m sorry!” China sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect you.” And he buried his hands in the child’s shirt, chipped nails on soft cotton, not stopping until his breaths began to come out in ugly coughs. Japan hissed softly and looked away. 

He admitted it to himself, that he wished for China to cradle him like that, to mourn him so. In the midst of this sad, grotesque scene, however, it was evident that so much more of the world deserved a second chance over Kiku Honda. 

So take it while you can. Take it, he hammered himself. Why do you keep going? Have you become accustomed to power? Are you at the point of no return? Do you just not know how?

He did not take it, choosing to simply stand over China as the other grieved. Because he was too proud to capitulate the last fifty years wherein he had lived on that belief that he was creating a better, fortunate future. Wherein he had lived _for_ the future, for this future. Because he was too proud to accept that even if he regretted it, he would discover his own powerlessness in trying to go back— scared that there was nothing more than could be done, in the year of 1938, so afar from the day the black ships docked in the 1850s.

 

“Hey,” Romano said, pulling up a chair besides Japan in a poorly lit Florentine bar. “You look like you’re having fun these days.”

Japan smiled faintly. It was rare that he would see Romano or Prussia rear their heads during the Axis meetings, but they did like to show up informally. “With Veneziano and Germany? Yes, they are good company.”

“Not sure I can say the same, but I’m glad at least someone can tolerate the German and my dumbass brother. At once.” He waved at the busy bartender. “Hey, a vodka please!”

“I’m trying to drown out East Europe with their own medicine,” Romano explained. Sometimes he could be as talkative as his brother. “Hitler’s been having just a real a wild time fucking around with West Europe since France and England declared war, and now Mussolini wants to fight too.”

“If France falls, Mussolini will join the conquest, won’t he?” Japan recalled.

“Yeah. He’s already set his sights on Greece.”

Japan took a sip of his wine. “It’s not bad news. Yet you aren’t pleased.”

The Italian rolled his eyes at that. “Evidently not,” he said, with such carelessness that it surprised Japan. “It’s just another war to me. But Veneziano loves Ancient Rome as much as he loves Holy Rome, and Il Duce can’t get his head out of his ass long enough to see that we’re too poor for this.”

“You talk like you disapprove of Mussolini,” Japan snorted. “I didn’t know that. It’s interesting, because your brother adores him.”

“I don’t hate him,” Romano muttered. “Usually. He did kind of get our people to stop hating each other. United my brother and I for real this time. I guess Veneziano will always worship him for that.”

Then Romano leaned against his hand, and looked out the window warily. “I can’t, though. Like really, Greece? I know sometimes the Axis feels like a group of friends more than anything, but love built on this— _murder_ can’t last. But who knows. What do you think?”

“Aren’t all relations between countries are built on someone’s grave?” Japan thought of England and the United States, and the Amerindians. “Perhaps it won’t last, but it was real too.”

Romano nudged Japan. “Fair enough. I’ll drink to you tonight, then.”

In the years to come, Mussolini would indeed vault Italy into the war, and soldiers headed for Athens like it was a Vatican paradise. Veneziano dreamt of his grandfather and a boy with golden hair, but they were in Rome and Berlin, not across the Adriatic. Romano, for his part, wrote angry letters to Francisco Franco’s house, before finally disappearing underground. The Italian regime collapses against Germany’s shoulder, a tear in the threads of Hitler’s European puppetry.

 

In 1941, in the name of a mission hidden from even the guardians of American democracy (that’s to say, the journalists), Roosevelt and his nation sneak onto a battleship and set sail for Placentia Bay, Canada. Ask FDR what they were up to this time, and he would have beamed, “the Atlantic Charter!” Ask the United States, however, and he would have said, equally pleased, “We’re going to ask Britain to end his empire.”

Since the Battle of Britain and the Luftwaffe’s attempt on the English capital, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been vying for American-Allied support. Roosevelt, with all his conviction that intervention was a moral duty, kept an open ear, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Congress would. “That’s why we’re playing hide and seek with the public,” Roosevelt informed his nation. “So we can at least hear out Winston.”

“Mmhm,” America agreed. “This might be a little too much even for him, though. Churchill is an imperialist at heart.”

Roosevelt whistled. “It’s a good thing he’s desperate then.” 

The Atlantic Charter was, in many ways, a contract necessitating agreement from Great Britain if they wanted the Americans to join the Allied side (a funny thing for the president to negotiate, since it was Congress’ right to declare war). In various clauses, it declared that the United States and Great Britain would set an anti-imperialist vision for the post-war world. Here, Roosevelt’s dream of a cooperative global diplomacy replaced the shadow of Woodrow Wilson’s. “But this time we’re not going to wait for the Peace Conference to grant us what we want,” FDR explained. “We’re going to have our Allies agree to it before we even enter the war, so they’ll know what we’re fighting for.”

As the USS Augusta slid into the military base, greeting the equally clandestine British vessel, horns blared and bands beat to the tune of ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘God Save the King’. Behind the bow of the other battleship, America could discern England besides his Prime Minister. Is that his arm in a cast? America wondered, squinting in an attempt to get a better look at the other nation. Of course he wouldn’t be in a good shape.

A feeling of guilt suddenly flashed through the younger nation. Right, he’d been thinking so much about how to strongarm England into agreements that suited American policies that America sometimes lost sight of the fact that he really did want to join the war, on any circumstance. FDR wanted to fight the totalitarians and build the new order, and America did too, but since the dawn of the Blitz when bombers and zeppelins smashed holes into England’s skin America just wanted to save England too.

Even if he had failed to do so in the past.

As their battleships finally slid close enough to each other and sank their anchors, a bridge was extended, connecting the British and the Americans. Elliott Roosevelt, FDR’s son, helped his father up from his wheelchair. Yes, America thought fondly, watching father and son, Mr. President would _walk_ across that deck even if it’d kill him. 

America skipped ahead, the wind ruffling the fur on his leather bomber jacket, and waved at England and Churchill with a boisterous grin on his face. “Hey, Arthur!” he cried. The Englishman looked away, so that only his bandaged eye was faced towards Alfred.

Churchill then whispered something to his nation, looking sympathetic. The United Kingdom closed his eyes, nodded, before walking up to the American and grabbing him by the arm.

Letting the other drag him to the sidelines, America regarded England closely. “Did Churchill force you to fraternize with me?” he asked, amused.

“No, idiot,” England scoffed. “He told me I could go downstairs if I didn’t feel well. But I felt ashamed to have been so obviously…” He waved his good hand, as if waiting for a word to fill in.

America laughed. “So obviously repulsed?”

“I’m not repulsed. Just fatigued.”

“You don’t hate me?”

England scowled. “You ask me that every fifty years. Why does it matter to you?”

“I guess I still need daddy’s approval,” America said, satisfied to watch England’s expression color slightly. “You’re going to be mad at what Roosevelt’s got for your Prime Minister, though.”

“The Atlantic Charter, blah blah.” England crossed his arms. “It’s not like we didn’t discuss it already back in London, I’ll have you know.”

“Good. And please understand,” America whispered. Now Roosevelt was managing his way across the deck with Elliott by his side and braces on his legs, where Churchill would meet him in the middle and shake his hand. “What do I say when my people ask what the fascists do to Europe that the British haven’t done to India?”

England tapped his foot. “I get it. I do get it. Your ‘salvation’ comes with strings attached.”

“You bet it does. I’ve thought a lot since 1919 and I've changed my mind. I’m going to take your crown and rule the world. But I’m not doing it to save your empire. I’m doing it for him,” America said. “Him and his dream: the United Nations.”

And America lifted a finger, pointing it at his president. Roosevelt wheezed as he and Elliott finally made it to the middle, and with both firmness and exhaustion, he grasped Churchill’s hand.

“You are still so hopeful,” England said. “Francis would hate that.”

“And you aren’t?”

England shook his head. “I’ve also done a lot of thinking since 1919. The world is a fundamentally miserable place, Alfred. That’s something Francis would agree with.”

America startled as a tear dropped and rolled down England’s cheek. “Francis really would,” England repeated, before he draped his face with his good arm and cried.

 

Downstairs, Churchill and Roosevelt, two men of magnificent charm who came to have a great natural liking of one another, dined with their staff and discussed the future of the Allied Powers. It would turn out the only way America would have expected it to, with Churchill not in a position to refuse, nor in a position to give up his hopes that the British Empire could still survive the war.

Upstairs, watching the faraway lights of the Canadian skyline and the waves of the blackened sea together, America and England leaned off the rail of the ship. 

America set his coat over England’s shoulders (and over England’s own coat). “Sorry for all the politics. I really want you to be okay, but I know you aren’t.”

England rubbed the empty sleeves of the newly placed garment lowly. “Thank you. Don’t think I’m angry or anything, at least. I…” He hesitated. “I want to believe in the charter, but I can’t.”

“Please tell me why,” America said. “I would fix it if I could.”

“Because of my own mistakes,” England confessed. “I once believed the British Empire could be used to better the world too. Maybe in centuries people will forget, but the world ushered in an era of peace during my reign. But it wasn’t enough, because good men die and times change and power will always hurt the weak and it’s just _never_ enough.”

America nodded. “And you wonder how the United Nations will be any different. Then I, too, am biased by my own story.” 

Then America poked England, smiling. “Once upon a time I did awful things. I enslaved my own people. But because my country was founded on liberty for all humans, founded on a Constitution that explicitly stated so, it was like a compass and it led my people back to the right direction. Yeah it took way too fucking long and I’ll pay for it, and I’m still not there yet, I still do awful things, but it’s like the North Star for the lonely traveler. A reminder of what I was born for and my medicine when it has to be. So I’m inclined to believe that the silly charter, both this one and the one we’ll set up after the war, will be another guiding star for humanity.”

“I love my Constitution,” America said. “You gave it to me, England, from your Magna Carta and your own trials with democracy. I owe you so much. Born from your empire and asking you to surrender it for me.”

England rubbed his arms. “Let me tell you something.”

“Yes. I’m listening.”

“I love you, America.” America coughed loudly. “No, listen,” England continued, wheezing. “I was cold and I didn’t believe in nations loving each other the way humans did until the day I met you in a field. And then all of a sudden I began to love too many people. I looked across the Saint Lawrence River and fell head over heels for France and Canada too.”

“And France adored you as well,” England went on, and he kept wiping his nose. “Good Lord, this is such a stupid story, but you know how we fought over you and Matthew. In the 1750s, we had the final battle for Canada and the only thing I had left to do was to conquer the city of Quebec. Before his final fortresses fell, Francis turned to me and said, ‘ _Ben_ Arthur, isn’t it a shame that we couldn’t have here the City of Babel?’ For in some ideal world we would all speak French and English and every other nasty language _together_ , and we wouldn’t have to climb to heaven alone. Yet instead all we did was rip each other apart, down on Earth. Do you think it’d be like the Bible, Alfred? Do you think when we get too close to paradise God tears our city walls down?”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” America murmured. “But I know that if you don’t build towers and fortresses, they can’t fall. And I’m sure God would be just fine to let us build our own heaven on the ground.”

Laughter erupted from the dining room below. The draft grew stronger and America shivered, so the two nations decided to share America’s coat.

 

“A preemptive strike,” his generals had drawled. “You understand that war with America is inevitable.”

Yes, Japan supposed. The embargo choked him more and more each day and the Americans would only grow stronger as time passed. Was that too not Germany’s reasoning for refusing to stall Operation Barbarossa any longer, despite a lack of certain preparations?

“If you can just destroy all the American aircraft carriers in Hawaii, and strike the British at the same time in Burma and sink their fleet as well, it’s worth a declaration of war that’s bound to occur anyway.”

Fighter jets. Pilots on suicide missions that were dubbed ‘kamikaze’. Once the gods sent divine winds to rescue him from enslavement by Mongolia. Perhaps, he mused with an awful feeling, the gods won’t back him anymore. Now he has to kill himself for the great sky’s protection.

So he did it. He picked petals off his dried flower crowns and threw them to winter breeze. He stopped thinking about the pain he could have prevented. He let General Tojo and the others call the shot and cut the red string between him and America. He let Hirohito take him to the shrine of Amaterasu, where both of them prayed.

It’s funny, he thought, kneeling. I will not stop it from happening, I will not apologize, but I’m already sorry.

 

Another funny thing was that, by December 7, 1941, the Americans had already decoded Japanese telegrams on the subject of an attack on Pearl Harbor. 

“Fuck this,” America said, throwing the translated papers against the Oval Office desk. “Or not. I mean, it is what we need to go to war.”

Roosevelt pinched his nose. “Give me a moment. Sorry, I’m on the phone with MacArthur. I keep telling him to evacuate his damn planes from the Philippines but that knucklehead won’t. If he lets the Japanese get their hands on them…”

America winced. “That’s right. They’re gonna strike the Filipinos and Arthur’s troops down in Indochina too. How many hours do we have? Can we warn them?”

Roosevelt set down the phone with an air of annoyance. “General won’t pick up, first of all. Before we do anything, Alfred, and I do mean anything, we evacuate the aircraft carriers first.”*

“Even before lives? Assuming we have time for that?” Roosevelt nodded curtly, and America let out a bitter laugh. “Dammit, Japan. Go to hell. And I’ll go to hell with you.”

Future historians may consider Pearl Harbor a grievous error, hauling America into the war and sending Hitler in a rush to declare war on that faraway republic, in spite of how America could now compensate for the Soviet Union’s poverty. But at the time it occurred, before people would come to know that the US aircraft carriers were all gone on the day of the attack, it did not seem so. That day, Japanese blew through the Philippines, sunk British ships and shoved them back at Burma, and destroyed half of the American battleships by Hawaii.

Throughout the attack, America spat blood, as his president gripped his arms with a grimace. “We will avenge them, Alfred. Now it seems cruel and terrible. Now you look back on hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution and wonder what good we’ve done. When we can still slaughter each other like this. In the face of all we have sacrificed. But that’s exactly why we bear the tides of change.”

“England,” America heaved, burying his head in Roosevelt’s shoulder. “I can see England.”

But Honda Kiku grew further and further. A well intentioned cleaning lady had thrown out the kiseru, and America had nearly thrown a fit. Of all the things lost to time and change, why did it have to be that ancient island in the personification of a small, shy man? Those pale fingers used to find their way through Alfred’s scalp as his low voice said, “America, your hair is like gold. Your heart is, too. You’re like my man of gold, aren’t you?”

An agent from the Japan Embassy burst into the room, slightly out of breath with a briefcase in hand. “The Empire of Japan,” he said, “declares war on the United States of America.”

 

It was less than a year after that fateful strike when Japan saw that he was beginning to lose the Pacific. Soldiers from all across Asia, soldiers from the entire British Empire and the Americans on the other side gave him hell on his conquered land. At Midway, four of his aircraft carriers were sunk: a devastating blow to a nation already tight on resources. 

In the aftermath of the lost battles, it was the same routine. Japan always returned to the Imperial Palace, kicking off his shoes outside but letting blood trail inside either way. He apologized to Hirohito formally while his generals apologized to him. No, get up, Japan wanted to tell them. Don’t be sorry. Just get up and leave. 

He wanted to be alone. He watched Hirohito bring a fish, a microscope, and sake into his private room and guessed that his emperor felt the same.

 

America sat on the beaches of California and drank watermelon soda slowly. No, he would not normally drink something as… unique as watermelon flavored soda, but it had been sold in an interesting shop. A shop owned by a American couple over which a sign read boldly: I AM AN AMERICAN.

Executive Order 9066. Mr. Korematsu. Japanese-American internment after Pearl Harbor. Isn’t that interesting? The hyphen implied that Japanese-Americans were Americans. Even without the hyphen he knew that the Japanese-American couple who owned the shop were indeed American. Even without being Japanese-American he knew that the couple who owned the shop were humans.

But there were always excuses. There were always phrases like ‘national security’ and ‘the economy’. It’s not like they were wrong, America reminded himself. It’s also what Calhoun and Jefferson Davis said, America reminded himself. Tired from the heat of the day and unwilling to get up, the nation opted to toss the now empty bottle into a metal trash bin. 

He could convince himself that it wasn’t wrong. But he could never bring himself to day that it was right. “Why, Roosevelt?” America cursed to the sand under his feet. “Kiku is totally crazy and power hungry. But he had a point. We used to wrong him. Nowadays, I still wrong him and his people, and even when his people are also mine.”

Of course, fascists like Japan weren’t any better. But how that was supposed to be consolation, America didn’t know. 

 

“Hi Japan,” Taiwan called through his door one day. “Can we talk?”

Japan, having never quite figured out how to use cologne, sprayed it all over his face and haori, hoping to mask the scent of death that followed him these days. Not only from the loss of life overseas, but even at his homefront now, as Allied bombers raided and devastated his cities.

Taiwan slid open his door gingerly, before sliding it back closed after she slipped in. “You haven’t come to see me in a while. It must be because of guilt, right?”

“Yes,” he admitted, after a moment.

She dropped to sit besides him. His dear little sister. “Do you have any mochi?” she asked. He nodded and reached for the cabinet, but she grabbed his wrist.

“Later, please. I got you some milk but I left it under the tree outside. I was thinking we could eat them together.”

“Milk and mochi? Children like both those things.”

“‘Cause they’re good,” she said. Affirming this to herself seemed to change her mind about later, and she set out to retrieve the milk while Japan retrieved the rice cakes.

He drank from a teacup and let it roll down his chin as she wiped the cornstarch on her lips against her sleeves. Japan was suddenly reminded of China’s kiss, Korea’s embrace, then how Taiwan had refused to do the same.

“I like your clothes today,” she said. “It’s got koi on it.”

“Thank you.” He set the porcelain cup down harshly, and it made a clattering sound against the table. “This is unbearable, Taiwan. I won’t force you to keep me company anymore. So please just leave.”

“You’re denser than this mochi.” Accordingly, she smacked the other island gently. “I need you to know something, Honda Kiku. All these years I stayed by your side in spite of your power, not because of it. I watched you grow cruel, yeah, but I still cared about you.”

“Taiwan,” he muttered.

“Most people had no choice,” she said. “They were raped. But I gave you my body because I wanted to, and I wanted your stupid soul to see that. I have always been lonely too, you know. You weren’t the only one. Yet I never hurt anyone. I knew that my suffering isn’t something I can use to buy the suffering of others, ‘cause it’s not a zero sum game.”

“I’m sorry for being so bad at games,” he murmured.

“Just say ‘I love you too’, dumb boy.”

“You will be the death of me,” he confessed, digging his nails into his chest.

She pried his hand away, once more. “Me? No, I think that position’s been reserved for China.”

 

By 1945, China was still there. Japan settled his head in China’s lap, and China combed through his thick black hair, just as he did when the island was young.

Japan looked up, smiling faintly as China’s hair, having since grown long again, hangs over him like a waterfall. You’re so beautiful, he thought. You’re just like the moon. Once, I gave you up, believing that I would never touch you.

But if Taiwan was right, then he had been there all along. How silly of me, Japan laughed to himself, to have longed yet to have never noticed.

“I love you,” he said. 

China hummed. “I love you too. That’s how you wanted me to respond the first time you confessed it, right? But I was kind of shocked and fuzzy so I just said something stupid like ‘I know’.”

Japan blinked. “I… see. But it’s all right, because you said it before you kissed me. Can you do that again? Please?”

“Kiss you?” China massaged Japan’s head harder. “No. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth, you criminal.”

“I’m also a hypocrite. I won’t fall for you because you’re weak, but I won’t let you be strong. But since I’m losing the war anyway, I may as well give up now, and die for love.”

“Nothing would make you a martyr now,” China said. “Though that’s a good idea, even if you and your people are stubborn. So give up for me, Kiku. Succumb for me. Please.”

Japan cupped the other’s face, and his mouth involuntarily twitched into a frown. “I may as well. Yet I cannot.”

“Your pride won’t let you,” China concluded. “Too bad. There’s no other option, then, for the two of us except for me to become strong.”

“This is how we’ll last, Kiku,” he said. “I will wax as you wane, and we will go back and forth for the rest of eternity, since fate won’t let us coexist at once.”

China brushed his hair out of his eyes and glanced up at the Milky Way. “What a miserable heaven.”

 

Right before the Axis Powers fell, Roosevelt died.

The funeral procession was black and weary. There were the hopes he could not stay long enough to realize, and the people that he left behind— but no one needed another cruel reminder of the incessant roll of the war and all that it took with it.

His oldest loved one to outlive him was the United States, who hid under an umbrella during the mourning. In a daze, the nation stumbled around New York, half dissociated and bumping into walls. 

“Why,” he asked his younger self, who he swore was following him around the ruins of New Amsterdam. “Why did you spend your life so scared?”

“I didn’t,” the Alfred F. Jones of 1776 protested, wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary War. “I just knew that the outside world was a bad place. You know what England’s tyranny did to us!”

“But you hurt him too,” America hissed. “You wanted to be strong with none of its responsibility. That just isn’t right!”

Alfred only laughed at that. “Be strong?” He jabbed his older self in the chest. “America, it all started when you wanted England’s attention again.”

“Why, you,” America began, but then he felt a jerk on his shoulder and stumbled back. “Hey—“

“America! You were headed towards a wall.” He turned around to see England, bundled in a scarf, shooting him a concerned look. 

“Right,” he coughed. “I knew that. I was just…”

“You’re clearly feeling awful,” England said, pulling the other nation in some other, probably better thought-out direction. “Here, let’s sit down.”

The two of them ended up sitting on a curb together, so perhaps it really wasn’t better thought-out. England leaned against America, closing his umbrella for him.

“Sorry, the crown is a burden too, isn’t it? And now that he’s passed before the war’s even ended, you want to make sure that you can do it right.”

“You grew up to be so amazing, America,” England whispered. “I once refused to recognize it because you had to abandon me to get there. But even then, I knew that I was being selfish.”

“I’m back, Arthur,” he sniffed. “This time you’d have to force me to let go.”

 

In some poorly lit Florentine bar, Germany sat down besides Japan and ordered a heavy drink. “ _Grazie_ ,” he tagged on somewhat hesitantly to the bartender. Japan smiled faintly.

“How are you? Not well, right? Since the fighting’s reached Berlin.”

“Good guess,” Germany agreed. “I feel like shit.”

“Indeed. Things are going to shit.” Japan motioned to his own drink. “Vodka.”

“Hopefully not inspired by Braginsky,” Germany said.

“No, Romano. But it’s also a good guess.”

“Romano.” Germany shut his eyes for a long moment, flooded by a succession of memories. “Japan, was what we did justified?”

“We wanted to be great and happy, didn’t we? But it came at too great of a cost.” Japan paused. “At least for me.”

“No, I think for me too, at this point. I lost my brother, my people, and my humanity. And him, too.” 

Japan watched as Germany buried his face in his hands. “My best friend,” he finished, the fall of Rome living on in his head. “Veneziano.”

 

Even in his sickest moments, he had refused to capitulate. Then the bombs— a revolution in not only technology, but also in diplomacy and brutality —dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the flash of a single second, hundreds of thousands vanished. 

Such a lovely country cannot perish, Hirohito had said. There was nothing lovely about him now as he outlived his people, his skin burning to pulp and his chromosomes shattering like glass. 

He could not remove himself from the floor. All he saw was red, and that was all the ministers saw as well, beholding their nation screaming into his hands.

“I don’t want to die!” he cried.

Japan surrenders, August, 1945. It’s the end of an era, a tragedy, and he has nowhere to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Now no one knows what really happened in the Oval Office that day and how much FDR knew in advance of Pearl Harbor, but I’m hard pressed to believe that ALL the American aircraft carriers being gone the day of the attack was a mere coincidence.


	6. epilogue

MacArthur sort of kicks Hirohito out and leaves the old man to his microscopes when America comes to occupy Japan. The key word being sort of, because the only power the Emperor gave up was having to profess his lack of divinity; the real ministers or generals who MacArthur replaced tended to have been either ousted or executed.

“I’m in charge of Japan’s recovery? On a personal level?” America shifts in his seat. “That’s going to be real awkward, Truman.”

“Would you have someone else do it then?” Truman wonders. America sighs.

So America takes the first plane to Tokyo with no luggage and no carry ons except for his polaroid camera. Stalling time before he has to see his old friend, he speaks to the women still wearing kimonos as everyday attire and buys insane quantities of ramen. Japan used to tell America that his favorite ramen was sold by a Chinese immigrant restaurant in the 1900s.

It’s when the ancient sun begins to set that America realizes he can’t put this off for any longer. He puts his camera away, asks around for the address, jumps the fence into the veranda, and sends three knocks against the shōji door.

“Japan? This is America. MacArthur tells me you haven’t been eating.”

America shakes the bag in his hand so Japan could hear the cooked dumplings rattling from inside. “I’m coming in. I brought food.”

Finally, a voice penetrates the thin wood. “Welcome,” it rasps. “Please take off your shoes.”

America opens the door and almost jumps, not expecting Japan to be mere inches from it. The body of the island, including his face, is thickly bandaged from head to toe. He wears an animal mask over his face, probably to hide the sterile horror of holes in cloth acting as his eyes and his mouth.

“Woah, sorry,” America says. He almost goes on and adds, you look as bad as you sound, but where would that conversation even go?

Japan bows with such stiffness that America wants to tell him not to, but before he can, Japan is already disappearing into the house. America quietly slips off his oxfords and sets the dumplings on the kotatsu.

He watches as Japan returns with a set of chopsticks and plates. “Can you eat?” America asks, sitting down with the other nation and letting the warm draft from under the table slightly puff up his pants.

“I can try,” Japan replies, to which America frowns.

“What, you haven’t tried yet? MacArthur wasn’t kidding.”

“The barrier is mental, not physical,” Japan says, and he holds the mask to his face, as if he fears America would tear if off. “I… am not allowed to eat.”

America splits the pile of food between their dishes. “Says who?”

“My guilt. My pride.”

The blond looks at him for a long moment. “I understand what you mean. But you aren’t an imperialist anymore, and you aren’t hurting anybody right now. Hell, you’d hurt my feelings if you didn’t eat. Seriously.”

America picks up a dumpling with his chopsticks and raises it to Japan’s mouth. “Take off that mask. You have to eat to live. And everybody deserves to live.”

“I can’t,” Japan repeats, grabbing the mask harder. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t let you feed me.”

“Because it’s infantilizing, right?”

“Because I look ugly,” Japan says, deflating.

“Japan,” American hisses, “We aren’t at each others’ throats anymore. Goddamn it, eat!”

Japan’s hand trembles. “America, are you giving me permission to eat?”

America lets out an exasperated breath. “Yes. Please.” So as America watches him, Japan eats.

 

America and Japan play goldfish sometimes.

“I’m a little jealous that England chose you sometimes,” Japan murmurs.

“You make it sound like it’s a high school romance where it’s as simple as ‘do I prefer boy A or boy B’,” America argues. “It was way more complicated than that.”

“Something also very complicated is democracy,” Japan says. “But you think it’d work for my people anyway, right?”

“What a wild subject change. But yes. Democracy is for everyone.”

“Ugh, you,” the island mutters. “You’ve always been like this. So convicted. But I’ve tried to follow your path before, and it failed me.”

America crossed his arms. “You were misguided. Maybe. Hey, the West is different now. I’m not telling you to go all gung ho over Asia again. I’m just telling you to write a constitution with universal suffrage.”

“Am I back to the point where I just listen to what foreigners insist is good for me?”

“Yes,” America says. “And so are Austria and Germany.”

Korea, he wonders, do you still think I’m going to come out of this stronger?

 

The bandages come off in about a year, yet even then, resentment is still welling up between them. Sometimes, in the dim morning light, Japan will slide his kimono down further than he has to, forcing America to look at the scars the bombs have left. “You’re as dirty as gold,” he grins to the other, knowing that the other has always loved purity. “And as selfish too.” 

One day he kneels before the other and purrs mockingly. “Am I little more than your colony now, great America? Where you can set up your military bases and have your men rape me?”

America usually ignores him, but he can’t bring himself to ignore _that_. He pulls Japan over by the collar and backhands him across the cheek. 

“Shut up,” America growls, and Japan notices the tears in his eyes. An acknowledgment of the truth in his insults. “Shut up and focus on healing.”

 

The Cold War heats up, and Japan knows that America sees the Soviet Union as the last obstacle to his ideal world. Japan watches as America curses the color red and wonder if he’d ever be lucky enough to witness America lose himself.

He also knows that Russia and Communist China are having the time of their lives on the other side of the sea. The two of them made it together in the end, didn’t they, over their greatest adversaries, and they did it knowing that they did not have to become part of the world used to spurn them— the Occident.

At one post-war conference, Japan notices the USSR sitting besides both China and Prussia, smiling despite the wounds he’s obviously covered in. “Soon enough, I bet, we’ll dethrone America and rule the world ourselves.”

Prussia rolls his eyes, while China fans himself and laughs like Japan hasn’t seen him do for ages. The white star on his armband flutters. “One day, Ivan, you just might get drunk enough to do it.”

 

Perhaps one of the nastier fates after the war went to Korea. He had even told Japan back in 1945, when he had tasted liberation for the first time in a century, “I want to come out of this stronger too.”

But he’d been broken in half. Across the 38th parallel, a new face appears. His hair is knotted in a long braid that drops to the middle of his back, the way Korea hasn’t worn it since the Joseon days, and he tells Japan that the peninsula is his. North Korea glares through the border and sneers at Yong Soo, “Brother, do you remember when you killed me?”

Taiwan just shakes her head. “What a mess those superpowers have made. Sometimes, you just can’t go back. It’s fractured forever.” Japan’s not so dense to think that she’s talking about just Korea.

But she’s kind and she has a forgiving heart. So she agrees to come along when he asks her if she wants to watch the plum blossoms at his home.

 

Japan eats dumplings regularly now. He doesn’t even need America to watch him do it anymore.

 

It’s on one of those days when he’s doing that strange act of eating dumplings alone in his quiet house that someone tries the front door instead of vaulting onto his veranda. 

“Hello,” China calls. Japan practically throws the door open.

They have black-or-red tea on that slightly abused kotatsu. “It’s been a while,” China allows. “I swear, you’ve gotten even smaller somehow.”

“Save it,” Japan grimaces. “Save all of this. Why did you come here, China?”

China tilted his head. “Straight to the point and businesslike. Did America teach you how to do that?”

“Yes, he keeps me on a short leash. But he’s not a Capulet, and you can still love me.”

China snorts. “I will always love you,” he says. “But I won’t come back to you. These days, I need to save myself first.”

Japan scoffs. “Always. You’ve always saved yourself first. That’s why you’re so old.”

The other Easterner narrows his eyes. “Evidently. I named myself the Middle Kingdom for a reason. Now, look at us.”

China reaches a hand towards Japan, and sets it gently over the island’s heart. 

“You fell and I rose, as we needed to. Here the two of us are again with our lessons learned, for better or worse. Once you were my weakness, not just because you were so strong, but because I began to value your life over even my own. For a second, I even believed that you were meant to rule the Far East.”

China scowls. “But you became so horrible. You didn’t just throw a coup— you wrecked the entire household. Yet I still love you, much more than I should be able to bear.”

All of a sudden, China stands up, and hauls Japan up with him by the arm. Japan blinks, confused, before China picks him up by the waist and spins him off his feet. 

“China!” Japan yelps. “Put me down!” 

China twirls them one last time before he complies. “You always wanted to fly.” He laughs like he’s trying to keep the bitterness outside his throat. “You wanted so much. For once I wish that you hadn’t wanted me too.”

There’s a long pause, before China tells him, “I’m going to go now, actually. I have something to do, and also, I’m afraid I might cry.”

“Beijing?” Japan asks.

“No, Nanjing. For reasons.” 

And China waves goodbye.

 

On Christmas Day, Japan puts lights on his bonsai and bakes a big fruitcake. He throws on his ugliest clothes and opens the (veranda) door for America and England.

“Merry Christmas,” England cheers, cradling a bottle in his arms. “Let’s get smashed tonight.”

“You look great, Japan,” America grins. “You’re definitely not as pale as you used to be— it must be your recovering economy!”

And Japan begins to feel very bad for how low effort his attire is for the night. Yes, he hadn’t been in the best of moods as of late, but it was still a lovely night, and it was a holiday absolutely dear to the decadent, flawed, yet caring West.

“I’m sorry, I still need to change. Please allow me a moment.” He shooes them into a different room.

“I was right when I was younger,” he mutters, as he looks into a mirror. He scrunches his nose at his outfit. “I really don’t have to see it all,” he says, thinking about those jeans.

Of course he knew it was more than that, at heart. He had been right because then he had realized that there was too much you could lose. He could have lost America and England too.

He also knew he could no longer go back to obsessing over sepulchres and other sorts of graveyards. It was bizarre, how he had to learn that sitting here, in this oft empty house, it would be all right.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe the world would go to war again. But at the moment, those affairs seemed so far.

Japan touches his lip gingerly, noticing a crack. What now? Sometimes if he focuses hard, he can see the Japan from a decade ago in the reflection, tired and rotting to the bone, always searching, grasping, fighting for something, yet never the thing that was right. He understands that under the present warmth he may feel so put together and detached, but when the dog days roll by again and politics flare up he still is that person, that worn Kiku Honda, with all of his sins.

So he hits England’s alcohol, and tries to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T∇T the end! 
> 
> It was a lot of fun to write this. In many ways, this is my letter as to why I like Japanese history. It’s a very human arc, I feel. I also totally shoehorned in my love for America’s struggle with isolationism. He's like the second protagonist of this fic lol.
> 
> And yes, my theory is that Korea spent most of its modern history as the character Yongsoo, but in the three states period of Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche, now-North Korea was his brother who he had to conquer to become a whole “Korea” ;)


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